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Or 
New Light on the Doctrine 
of Creation 


By ¥ 
GEORGE McCREADY PRICE 


Professor of Chemistry and Physics, Lodi Academy, California 


Author of Outlines of Modern Science and Modern 
Christianity,” * The Fundamentals of Geology,” 
“ Goad’s Two Books,” * Back to the Bible,” 
“A Text-Book of General Science,” ete. 


«7. . . andset you square with Genesis again,” 
—Robert Browning. 





NEw YORK »~ CHICAGO TORONTO 


Fleming H. Revell Company 


LONDON AND EDINBURGH 





Copyright, 1917, by 


_ FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. : 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London: 21! Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 


To 


WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON 
Scholar, Critic, Poet and Christian Gentleman 


This book is dedicated by one who 
owes to jus advice and kindly sym- 
pathy more than can be expressed 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
In 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


httos://archive.org/details/qedornewlightondOOpric 


Preface 


HE great world disaster, ushered in with 

the dawn of that August morning in 

1914, has already brought revolutionary 

changes in many departments of our thinking. But 

not the least of the surprises awaiting an amazed 

world, whenever attention can again be directed to 

such subjects, will be the realization that we have 

now definitely outgrown many notions in science 

and philosophy which in the old order of things 
were supposed to have been eternally settled. 

There are but two theories regarding the origin 
of our world and of the various forms of plants and 
animals upon it, Creation and Evolution,—the latter 
assuming many modifications. 

The essential idea of the Evolution theory is 
uniformity ; that is, it seeks to show that life in 
all its various forms and manifestations probably 
originated by causes similar to or identical with 
forces and processes now prevailing. It teaches 
_the absolute supremacy and the past continuity of 
natural law as now observed. It says that the 
changes now going on in our modern world have 
always been in action, and that these present-day 
natural changes and processes are as much a part of 
the origin of things as anything that ever took 
place in the past. In short, Evolution as a philos- 

q 


8 PREFACE 


ophy of nature is an effort to smooth out all dis- 
tinction between Creation and the ordinary processes 
of nature that are now under the régime of “ natural 
law.” 

On the other hand, the essential idea of the doc- 
trine of Creation is that, back at a period called the 
“beginning,” forces and powers were brought into 
exercise and results were accomplished that have 
not since been exercised or accomplished. That is, 
the origin of the first organic forms, indeed of the 
whole world as we know it, was essentially and 
radically different from the ways in which these 
forms are perpetuated and the world sustained to- 
day. Zzme is in no way the essential idea in the 
problem. The question of how much tume was 
occupied in the work of Creation is of no impor- 
tance, neither is the question of how long ago it took 
place. The one essential idea is that in its nature 
Creation is essentially inscrutable; we can never 
hope to know just how it was accomplished; we 
cannot expect to know the process or the details, 
for we have nothing with which to measure it. 
The one essential thing in the doctrine of Creation | 
is that the origin of our world and of the things 
upon it came about at some period of time in the 
past by a direct and unusual manifestation of 
Divine power ; and that since this original Creation 
other and different forces and powers have prevailed 
to sustain and perpetuate the forms of life and in- 
deed the entire world as then called into existence. 

Accordingly, we might establish the Evolution 


PREFACE | 9 


doctrine by showing that matter can be made de 
nove, that energy can be created or increased in 
amount, that life.can be made from the not-living, 
and that new and distinct forms of life can be pro- 
duced in modern times,—all by natural law as now 
prevailing. 

Or we can practically demonstrate the historical 
reality of a direct Creation at some time in the 
past, if we can show that the net results of all 
modern science tend to prove that the forces and 
processes now in operation can never account for 
the origin of things; that matter, and energy, and 
life, and the various forms of life must all have had 
an origin essentially different from anything now 
going on around us. 

This indicates the line of argument adopted in 
the following pages. 

The Evolution theory has been widely discussed 
and accepted in modern times. Indeed it has had 
a fair chance and an open field for several decades. 
What is the present situation of the controversy ? 
The friends of the Bible and of old-fashioned Chris- 
tianity need to know the real facts of the present 
situation. 

Every now and then the news despatches report 
that the great Professor So-and-so has at last really 
produced life from the not-living, or has obtained 
some absolutely new type of life by some wonder- 
ful feat of breeding. Or-some geologist or arch- 
eologist has discovered in the earth the missing 
link which connects the higher forms of life with 


10 PREFACE 


the lower, or which bridges over the gulf between 
man and the apes. Thus many people who get 
their “science” through the daily papers really 
believe that these long-looked-for proofs of Evolu- 
tion have at last been demonstrated, and hence they 
receive without question the confident assertions of 
the camp followers of science published at space 
rates in the Sunday supplements that all intelligent 
men of to-day have long ago accepted the Evolution 
doctrine. 

But in spite of the quick dissemination of news 
and the universal spread of education, it seems but 
a slow process for the really important discoveries 
of modern science to filter down through such 
media as the current periodicals to the rank and 
file of society. The situation seems to illustrate 
the old adage that a lie will travel round the world 
while truth is getting on her shoes. Zhwus at hap- 
pens that the common people are still being taught in 
this second decade of the twentieth century many 
things that real scientists outgrew nearly a genera- 
tion ago, and assertions are still being bandied 
around wm the individual sciences which are wholly 
unwarranted by a general survey of the whole field 
of modern natural science. Indeed, in almost every 
one of the separate sciences the arguments upon 
which the theory of Evolution gained its popularity 
a generation or so ago are now known by the vari- 
ous specialists to have been blunders, or mistakes, 
or hasty conclusions of one kind or another. Thus 
the market value of all the various subsidiary stocks 


PREFACE 11 


of the Evolution group has been steadily declining 
in their respective home markets, and now stands 
away below par; while strange to say the stock of 
the central holding company itself is still quoted at 
fictitiously high figures. 

This curious—not to say deplorable—situation 
has developed largely because of the modern sys- 
tem of strict specialization in the various depart- 
ments of science. Each scientist feels compelled 
by an unwritten but rigid code of professional 
ethics to confine himself strictly to the cultivation 
of the little plot of ground on which he happens to 
be working, and is forbidden to express an opinion 
about what he may know has been discovered on 
another plot of ground on which his neighbor 1s 
working, except by express permission. In other 
words, science teaching has now become strictly 
a matter of authority, this authority being vested 
in the various specialists; and nobody is _per- 
mitted to look at it in a broad way, or to frame a 
general induction from the sum of all the facts of 
nature now discovered, under penalty of scientific 
excommunication. The scientific code of ethics 
forbids any general view of the woods: each man 
must confine himself to the observation of the par- 
ticular tree in front of his own nose. 

Bui these pages have been prepared under the 
idea that it is high time to take a more general 
survey of the geography, time to take our eyes off 
the various individual trees, and to look at the 
woods. Perhaps in some respects they may be 


12 PREFACE 


regarded as too technical for ordinary readers. 
But if this is the case, it is because the writer had 
to choose between this somewhat technical treat- 
ment of the subject and the alternative danger of 
making loose and inaccurate statements or dealing 
in glittering generalities too vague to carry con- 
viction. As it is, the writer is here trying to give 
directly to the general public the results of years 
of special research in correlating the data from 
many scattered departments of science,—results 
that most scientists would feel obliged to reserve 
for the select few of some learned society, to be 
published subsequently in the Reports of its 
“ Transactions,” and to find their way after years 
of delay into the main currents of human thought. 
But these dilatory methods of professional pedantry, 
miscalled “ ethics,” shall not longer be allowed to 
delay the publication of highly important principles 
which the public are entitled to know at once, and 
to know at first hand. Then, too, it is more than 
doubtful if any purely academic body could be 
found willing to become responsible for giving to 
the world conclusions so contrary to the vogue of 
the present day. 

That these brief chapters may clear up the doubts 
of some, and encourage the faith of many, is the 
object of their publication in this non-professional 
form. 

G. McC. P. 


Contents 


I. Matter AND ITs ORIGIN 
II. THE ORIGIN OF ENERGY 
III. Lire Onty From Lire ‘ 
IV. THe CELL AND THE Lessons IT TEACHES 
V. Wuat Is a “ SPECIES” ? 
VI. MENDELISM AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 
VII. Gerotocy Ann Its LzEssons . 


VIII. CREATION AND THE CREATOR 


13 


15 
31 
43 
57 
68 
78 
99 
125 





I 
MATTER AND ITS ORIGIN 


I 


HEN we were told by a prominent scien- 

; \ tist just the other day that “ electricity 

is now known to be molecular in struc- 
ture,” it almost took our breath away. And when 
we were informed that certain well-known chemical 
elements had been detected in the very act of being 
changed over into other well-known elements, with 
the prospect of such a transformation of the ele- 
ments being quite the normal thing throughout 
nature, the very earth seemed to be slipping away 
from under our feet. Some of the closely related 
discoveries, such as the fact that the X-rays show a 
spectrum susceptible of examination, were not so 
disconcerting in themselves; but the marvellous 
pictures of the structure of the atom elicited by 
these discoveries made many good people almost 
question whether our venerable experimenters had 
not been indulging in pipe dreams amid their lab- 
oratory work. 

Do we, then, begin to understand the real com- 
position of matter ? Does it have component parts, 
in the materialistic sense; or is what we call matter 
only a mysterious manifestation of energy? And 

16 


16 Q. E. D. 


if the latter be our answer, can we hope to settle 
the problem objectively and so conclusively that it 
will stay settled? In short, do we, regarding 
these border-line subjects between metaphysics 
and natural science, know anything more than our 
fathers and our grandfathers ? 

It will be convenient to consider these problems 
under two heads: the composition of matter, and 
the origin of matter. 


Il 


1. It was long ago recognized that matter must 
be composed of particles which are driven farther 
apart by heat and are brought closer together by 
cold, thus laying the foundation for the theory of 
the molecular composition of matter. But not 
until the time of Dalton, about a hundred years 
ago, was it proved that the molecule itself, the unit 
of physical change, is capable of definite division 
into atoms, the units of chemical change. This 
conception of the molecules and atoms as the ulti- 
mate units of which matter is composed maintained 
its place until the discovery of radio-activity and 
its associated phenomena, about 1896; since which 
time we have definitely ascertained that even the 
atoms are separable into still smaller units, and 
that possibly these units are all alike. On this last 
possibility, it would surely be a most amazing fact if 
such multitudinous “ properties ” of bodies could be 
produced merely by variations in the arrangements 
of these ultimate units into atoms, or in some other 


MATTER AND ITS ORIGIN 17 


way which produces vast differences in properties 
by combinations of units that are nevertheless mere 
duplicates of one another. 

As hydrogen is the lightest of the elements, it 
has been a favorite theory with scientists that the 
various elements are all composed of combinations 
of hydrogen atoms. But since many of the ele- 
ments have atomic weights which cannot be made 
exact multiples of that of hydrogen, it has been felt 
that there must be some other smaller unit than the 
hydrogen atom ; or else that these hydrogen atoms 
themselves change in weight when they combine 
to form other atoms. But mass seems to be the 
one unchangeable characteristic of matter; hence 
it was felt that any change of weight is almost 
unthinkable, and so a solution was sought in the 
direction of still further dividing the hydrogen 
atom, the smallest unit concerned in chemical 
change, as then understood. But now the facts 
and principles brought to light in connection with 
the studies of radio-activity have settled it that we 
actually do have a much smaller unit than the 
hydrogen atom, one of only about 77s5 its mass, in 
fact; and that this smallest of the small things of 
nature is none other than a particle of negative 
electricity, now called an electron. 

That the atoms of all the elements must have a 
common unit of composition, that they behave as 
if composed of ultimate particles that may be re- 
garded as duplicates of one another, has long been 
regarded as an inevitable conclusion from the 


18 0, END. 


Periodic Law of Mendeleef. This law says that 
the physical as well as the chemical properties of 
the various elements depend upon their atomic 
weights, or as it is stated in the language of 
mathematics, the properties of an element are 
functions of its atomic weight. This fact of the 
variation in the properties of elements in accord 
with their atomic weights has been even more 
strikingly illustrated by the behavior of discharges 
of electricity through rarified gases, as well as by 
the facts of radioactivity. To quote the words of 
Sir J. J. Thompson, “ The transparency of bodies 
to Roentgen rays, to cathode rays, to the rays 
emitted by radioactive substances, the quality of 
the secondary radiation emitted by the different 
elements, are all determined by the atomic weight 
of the element.” * 

Just recently we have had opened up before us a 
still more intimate inner-circle view of the com- 
position of matter. H.G. J. Moseley, a young man 
only twenty-six years of age, at an English uni- 
versity, devised a method of examining the spectra 
of the various elements by means of the X-rays. 
He found in this way that the principal lines of 
these various spectra are connected by a remarkably 
simple arithmetical relationship; for when the 
elements are arranged in the order of their atomic 
weights, they show a graded advance from one to 
another equal to successive additions of the same 
electrical unit charge, thus indicating a real gamut 

1 Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XVII, 891. Cambridge Edition, 


MATTER AND ITS ORIGIN 19 


of the elements that we can run up by adding or 
run down by subtracting the same unit of electrical 
charge. It is pitiable to have to record that next 
year this scientific genius was killed in the ill-fated 
Gallipoli expedition against Turkey. 

Thus in many fairly independent ways we are 
brought around to this same idea of a common 
structure underlying all the many seeming diver- 
sities manifested by what we call matter. 

The phenomena of radioactivity were discovered 
accidentally in 1896 by the French chemist Bec- 
querel. Many investigators immediately began 
working along this promising line, and two years 
later Madam Curie, in association with others, dis- 
covered the new element radium. Soon it was dis- 
covered that radium and several other substances 
are continually giving off radiations at an enormous 
rate, that no change of chemical combination, no 
physical change of condition appears to have the 
slightest effect in slowing or increasing this dis- 
charge of emanations, while no scientific apparatus 
yet devised can detect any change in the substances 
left behind either in respect to weight or any other 
properties as the result of these enormous losses of 
energy. Accordingly some people not unnaturally 
were ready to draw the conclusion that those most 
firmly established laws of physics and chemistry, 
the laws of the conservation of energy and of 
matter, were overthrown by this astonishing 
behavior of these newly discovered substances. 
However, only a few more years of study and 


20 Q. E. D. 


investigation were necessary to prove that this 
last conclusion was wholly unwarranted; and to- 
day these laws of the conservation of energy and 
of matter are more firmly established than ever. 
The thing that has gone by the board is the old 
idea of the atoms as the indivisible and irreducible 
minima of the material universe. For not only do 
all the radioactive substances give off particles of 
helium gas positively electrified, but all bodzes, no 
matter what their composition, can by suitable treat- 
ment, such as exposing them to ultra-violet light, 
or raising them to incandescence, be made to gwve 
off electrons or negatively charged particles, and 
these electrons are always the same no matter from 
what kind of substance they come. In a somewhat 
similar way, we always get positively electrified 
particles of the mass of the hydrogen atom, or 
about 1,760 times the mass of the electron, when- 
ever we send an electric charge through a gas at 
very low pressure, no matter what the kind of gas. 
Whether or not these positive units will yet prove 
susceptible of being split up into smaller particles 
comparable to the electrons, is merely a subject for 
conjecture. We have no proof that they will. At 
the present time what we call matter seems to be 
composed of these positive units and of the electrons 
which are about y7s5 as great ; and in the present 
state of our knowledge these facts suffice to explain. 
all the properties of matter. Thus we can either 
say that electricity 1s composed of matter, or say 
that matter is composed of electricity ; and human 


MATTER AND ITS ORIGIN 21 


language at best is such a clumsy vehicle of 
thought that scientifically and philosophically the 
one statement is as correct and as reasonable as the 
other. 

And probably we shall never be able to learn any 
more than this. We have arrived at a sort of box- 
within-a-box theory of the make-up of matter. By 
a very elaborate system of unpacking, or by some 
violent external force that makes the inside burst 
open, as it were, we seem to be able to make pieces 
fly off from the atoms, these pieces being then pro- 
jected into space with enormous force and velocity. 
There are theories galore of the structure of the 
atom; but as Prof. E. P. Lewis has said, most 
of these theories are so impossible as to be absurd, 
or so speculative that “they suggest no experi- 
mental tests for their validity.”’ Just at present 
Rutherford’s theory of the structure of the atom is 
quite popular. This postulates a nucleus composed 
of a group of positive units and electrons, with an 
excess of the positive charges equal to half the 
atomic weight, with an equal number of electrons 
circulating about this nucleus in rings. Bohr’s 
theory, which is not very different from this, has 
perhaps even more friends, and it is supported by 
the remarkable discoveries of the lamented Moseley. 
But we must not take such theories too seriously. 
As Kayser has said, any true theory of the make- 
up of the atoms must assume an absolutely full and 
perfect knowledge of all electrical and optical proc- 

1 Nature, April 5, 1917. 


22 Q. E. D. 


esses, and is therefore beyond our dreams. Or as 
Professor Planck said in his Columbia lectures, we 
are not entitled to hope that we shall ever be able 
to represent truly through any physical formule 
the internal structure of the atom. 


III 


2. We must now take up the second phase of 
our subject, the problem of the origin of matter. 

Before we knew anything of radioactivity we 
could have dismissed such a subject briefly by 
quoting the law of the conservation of matter, 
which says that matter can neither be created nor 
destroyed by any means known to science. By our 
knowledge of radioactivity we can make our answer 
a little more learned, a little less abrupt, but none 
the less discouraging to the advocate of the deveiop- 
ment hypothesis. We can tell how the elements of 
high atomic weight, such as uranium and thorium, 
are constantly giving off particles and are thus by 
loss or decomposition being changed over into 
other elements, such as radium, niton, polonium 
and lead. But our new knowledge compels us 
ultimately to give the same answer as_ before, 
namely, that we still do not know how matter ever 
could have originated, except that “in the begin- 
ning” it was called into existence by the fiat of 
Him whom we Christians worship as our God, the 
Creator. Thus we reach the conception of the 
universe as that of a great clock gradually running 
down, which is certainly the antithesis of that 


MATTER AND ITS ORIGIN 23 


picture so long held before us. by the advocates of 
the development theory. 

Uranium is a rather rare element, though known 
for over a hundred years, and has an atomic weight 
of 238.5. In decomposing it gives off first a 
helium atom, weight 4; and after this action has 
been repeated three times the substance left is 
radium, atomic weight about 226.4. Thus radium 
is simply uranium after it has lost three helium 
atoms. Radium in its disintegration gives off three 
kinds of particles, namely, helium atoms (positively 
electrified), S-rays or electrons, and ;-rays, the 
latter being identical with the X-rays, and having 
penetrating power sufficient to carry them through 
six inches of lead or a foot of solid iron. The final 
stage in this process of disintegration is the ordinary 
element lead, in which condition the atoms seem to 
have reached relative stability. Whether or not 
our stock of lead, with our other common elements 
that are not radioactive, was originally produced 
by the disintegration of these other elements, is 
merely a matter of conjecture. We know nothing 
at all about it. 

The length of time it takes for half the atoms of 
an element to change is called its “ life” or period. 
The periods of most of the radioactive substances 
have been calculated, that of uranium being very 
long. The calculated period of radium is 2,500 
years, while that of polonium is only 202 days, and 
that of niton 5.6 days. These unquestioned facts, 
together with the enormous amount of heat evolved 


/ 


24 0.) ED. 


by the disintegration of these substances (that from 
radium being about 250,000 times the heat evolved 
by the combustion of carbon), have thrown a great 
deal of doubt upon the older estimates of the age 
of the earth. 

The discussion of the details of these theories 
would be unprofitable. But through the mists of 
all these conflicting theories and probabilities two 
facts of tremendous importance for our modern 
world emerge in clear relief, namely, that the grand 
law of the conservation of matter still holds true, 
and hence that the matter of our world must have 
had an origin at some time in the past wholly dif- 
ferent im degree and different in kind from any 
process going on around us that we call a natural 
process. These elements of high atomic weight 
that break down into others of lower atomic weight 
may be so rare because they have been about all 
used up in this process. At any rate, so far from 
revealing the origin of matter as a process now go- 
ing on, these phenomena are an objective demon- 
stration that all matter is more or less unstable and 
liable under some unknown but ever-acting force to 
lose some portion of that fund of energy with which 
it seems to have been primarily endowed. LVot the 
evolution of matter but the degeneration of matter 
is the plain and unescapable lesson to be drawn 
from these facts. The varieties of matter may 
change greatly, and one variety or one chemical 
element may be transformed into another. But 
this transformation ¢s by loss and not by gain. It 


MATTER AND ITS ORIGIN 25 


is degeneration and not upward evolution that is 
now opened up before our astonished eyes by this 
peep into the ultimate laboratories of nature; and 
he is surely a blind observer who cannot read in 
these facts the grand truth that all this substance 
called matter with which science deals in her mani- 
fold studies must at some time in the past, I care 
not when, have been called into existence in some 
manner no longer operate. The past eternity of 
matter, as well as its progressive development from 
the simple to the complex, seems manifestly out of 
consideration in view of the facts as we now know 
them. There is no ambiguity in the evidence. So 
far as modern science can throw light on the ques- 
tion, there must have been a real Creation of the 
materials of which our world is composed,.a Cre- 
ation wholly different both in kind and in degree 
from any process now going on. 


IV 

A supposed objection has been raised to this view, 
based on the vastness of the universe as we now know 
it. Whether or not the universe is really infinite 
in extent, it is certainly of an extent that is practi- 
cally infinite, so far as our powers of observation 
or of reasoning are concerned. JBut this practically 
infinite universe is not a bit harder to account for 
than would be a definitely limited universe, say of 
the size of our solar system. If the spectroscope 
shows that the far distant parts of the universe con- 
tain many of the same elements as are found in our 


2 6 Q. E. D. 


solar system, we need not be surprised, since all are 
alike the work of the same Creator. Nor would 
this fact that the universe seems to be composed of 
similar materials throughout tend in any way to 
prove that all these parts of the universe were 
brought into existence at the same time, nor yet 
that our solar system was refashioned out of some 
of the common stock of the universe already on 
hand, as the nebular hypothesis supposes. For all 
that we can tell to the contrary, it would seem 
probable that the materials of our solar system 
were called into existence expressly for the position 
they are now occupying; and this seems to be the 
plain import of the record in Genesis. Of one 
thing, however, we can be certain,—these materials 
must at some time have been called into existence 
by methods or ways that are no longer in operation 
around us. “In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth.” 


Vv 


Some remarks are necessary here regarding the 
homogeneousness of matter, or the idea that the 
various elements are composed of primordial units 
which are themselves alike, mere duplicates of each 
other. If this should prove to be really the case, 
as seems to be quite likely in the light of the facts 
given above, would it not be a veritable triumph 
for materialism? Byno means. On the contrary, 
I think I can show in a very few words not only 
that this homogeneousness of matter is the only 


MATTER AND ITS ORIGIN 27 


rational view of the composition of the material 
universe, but also that it is the only view consistent 
with Christian Theism and with the doctrine of 
Creation. 

The theory of the atoms with their inherent and 
unchangeable properties, which prevailed during 
the greater part of the nineteenth century, natu- 
rally led us to look upon these properties as inher- 
ent in the things themselves. This was indeed 
materialism. This view, however, constantly 1m- 
pelled us to find out the essential differences be- 
tween the various kinds of atoms, so as to “ account 
for” their varying behaviors. And no matter how 
far we push such inquiries, this materialistic atti- 
tude of mind will control us so long as we think 
we are dealing with substances which are intrinsic- 
ally different. If the differences are innate or in- 
herent in the things themselves, we must naturally 
. endeavor to find out why and how they are differ- 
ent; and no matter how far we go along this road 
we are always headed in the direction of stark 
materialism. On the other hand, to say that the 
“properties” of the atoms are not inherent in 
themselves, but are imposed on them by an external 
ceaselessly acting power, the will of the Creator, 
would be in full accord with Biblical theism ; and 
then we might naturally say that the ultimate 
particles of which matter is composed may well be 
regarded as alike and mere duplicates of one an- 
other. And this, as we have seen, is just what 
modern discoveries in radioactivity are teaching us 


OY 8 Q. E. D. 


regarding the make-up of the substances that we 
call matter. 

But an objection at once arises, How can these 
primordial units of which matter is composed behave 
so differently, if they are really alike, mere dupli- 
cates of one another ? 

We may not as yet be able to tell just why and 
how; but we have.in the cells of which all plants 
and animals are composed an analogy which is al- 
most perfect, if not quite. 

These component units of organic matter, the 
individual cells, as will be explained later, seem 
physically and even chemically mere duplicates of 
one another. They may not all be of the same 
size; but they are all composed of protoplasm, and 
the protoplasm of plants cannot be distinguished 
from that of animals by any physical or chemical 
tests known to modern science. The protoplasm 
in the brain of a bird is the same as that in its toes; 
and no metaphysical subtilties about heredity have 
ever explained why the one does a different work 
from the other. The plain fact is that different 
cells, composed of identical protoplasm and struc- 
turally alike, act very differently ; and there is no 
scientific reason based on innate properties that 
gives us even a glimmer of a reason why. We 
have searched a long time along this road; but 
there is no prospect of finding an explanation ; we 
are merely running up a cul-de-sac with no view 
beyond. From the materialistic point of view, no- 
body knows why protoplasm acts as it does, least 


MATTER AND ITS ORIGIN 29 


of all, why some masses of protoplasm act one way, 
and exact duplicates act differently. But if, on the 
other hand, we look beyond the facts and methods 
of physics and chemistry, and even beyond the most 
plausible theories of genetics, we can readily ex- 
plain this remarkable action of the cells as the 
result of the will of an ever acting, omniscient, 
almighty God. Certainly nothing else is adequate 
to explain the behavior of living cells. 

In a very similar way we must reason regarding 
the ultimate units of matter, call them what we 
will, electrons, corpuscles, or units of electricity. 
If these are mere duplicates of each other, as science 
now teaches, they not only indicate by this identity 
that they are “ manufactured articles,” as was long 
ago pointed out of the atoms and molecules, but 
they also indicate with all the force of a demon- 
stration that nothing but an ever present omniscient 
Intelligence could keep these duplicates from always 
acting the same under similar external forces. If 
gold and carbon, iron and oxygen are at bottom 
composed of particles that are mere duplicates of 
each other, as seems to be the case, how can these 
elements and the six dozen or more others maintain 
their individuality throughout nature as we know 
they do, even in the far distant stars, except by the 
sleepless care of an Intelligence whose Word is as 
effective in one part of the universe as in another, 
and to whose Word these particles of matter can 
show no inertia and no disobedience, because they 
have no powers or properties except what He has 


30 ©. E, \D. 


imparted? This doctrine of the homogeneousness 
of matter is the antithesis of materialism. It is 
consistent only with the doctrine of an almighty © 
and ever present God, and like many other facts 
which have been developed by modern scientific 
discoveries, it confirms the other primal doctrine of 
a literal Creation “in the beginning.” 


VE 


The conclusion which our minds are forced to 
draw from the facts presented in this chapter is not 
doubtful, nor is it difficult to state. Matter is not 
now being brought into existence by any means 
that we call “natural.” And yet the facts of radio- 
activity very positively forbid the past eternity of 
matter. Hence, the conclusion is syllogistic: mat- 
ter must have originated at some time in the past 
by methods or means which are equivalent to a 
real Oreation. 

Thus far, at least, the record of Genesis is con- 
firmed: “In the beginning God created.” 


II 
THE ORIGIN OF ENERGY 


I 


HAT has been regarded by many as the 
WW greatest scientific triumph of modern 
times was worked out about the middle 
of the last century by James Prescott Joule and 
others, in determining that a certain amount of 
mechanical energy is exactly equivalent to a def- 
inite amount of heat. With this mechanical equiv- 
alent of heat all the various other forms of energy 
have also been correlated ; until now we have the 
general law of the Conservation of Energy, which 
says that energy can be neither manufactured nor 
destroyed, but merely transformed and directed. 
And this magnificent law, like that of the con- 
servation of matter, is strong evidence that there 
must have been a real Creation at some time in the 
long ago, different not merely in degree but in 
kind from anything known to modern science. 
Joule worked out the mechanical equivalent of 
heat by means of his now famous experiment of 
churning water. He reasoned that if the heat pro- 
duced by friction, ete., is really energy in another 
form, then the same amount of heat must always 
be generated by the expenditure of a given amount 
31 


32 "OQ. HES? D: 


of motion or mechanical work. And this must be 
true, no matter whether this work is expended in 
overcoming the friction between wood on wood, 
iron on iron, or in any other conceivable way. 
Accordingly, he devised an experiment in which 
paddle wheels were made to rotate in a vessel of 
water by means of falling weights somewhat like 
the weights of a clock. The amount of work rep- 
resented by the falling of the weights was easily 
calculated, and so was the amount of rise in tem- 
perature of the water caused by the friction of the 
water with the rotating paddle wheels. In various 
other ways he measured the amount of heat gener- 
ated by a measured amount of work; and as the 
result of all his experiments (with very slight cor- 
rections made since by means of more exact appa- 
ratus), we now know that 778 foot pounds of work 
produce heat enough to raise one pound of water 
one degree Fahrenheit; or stated in the metric 
system, 427 kilogram meters of work will produce 
a calorie of heat. 

Since these record-making experiments by Joule, 
the matter has been verified over and over again in 
all sorts of ways; and almost every kind of display 
of energy has been measured with more or less 
exactness. Even the amount of food oxidized in 
the human body is now known to be capable of 
correlation with the other forms of energy, though 
necessarily very minute exactness of measurement 
is scarcely attainable in this case. But no scientist 
of to-day doubts that all the physiological processes 


THE ORIGIN OF ENERGY 33 


of animals or of plants conform exactly to the law 
of the conservation of energy that energ’y is neither 
created nor destroyed by any means known to 
science. In other words, the amount of energy in 
our world, if science can at all determine such a 
matter, seems to be a jixed quantity, gradually be- 
ing dissipated into space, it is true, but momently 
replenished from the sun at exactly the same rate 
now as hundreds or thousands of years ago. And 
while this energy is in our world it 1s always capa- 
ble of exact correlation in all of its multitudinous 
forms, and is transformable back and forth without 
increase and without loss. 

On the discovery of the radioactive substances 
in 1896, some persons hastily concluded that the 
law of the conservation of energy was contradicted 
by the astonishing way in which these substances 
acted. But further and more accurate experiments 
have set this matter at rest, as indeed might have 
been expected ; for the law of gravitation itself is 
not more immovably established in the make-up 
of the universe than this magnificent law that 
energy cannot be created by any means which we 
call natural. 

In all ages there have been men who have spent 
their lives in the vain effort to invent a machine 
out of which work could constantly be obtained 
without the expenditure upon it of an equal amount 
of work. But the United States patent office has 
got so tired of receiving applications for patents 
based on this idea of perpetual motion that they 


34 Q. E. D. 


have long since refused to issue any such patent 
where this principle is the manifest object ; and I 
suppose the governments of other countries have 
taken a similar stand. And why? Because they 
know that energy cannot now be created by any 
device, no matter how ingenious; and they refuse 
to become a party to any scheme that seems to 
imply that this modern creation of energy 1s 
within the bounds of possibility. 

Yet what is all this but a confirmation of the 
declaration long. ago made that “the works were 
finished from the foundation of the world ” (Heb. 
4:3)? True, the energy we are constantly em- 
ploying seems to come to us from the sun; but we 
must remember that the sun and its family of the 
solar system, including the earth, were all made‘at 
the same time, that they are bound together as 
parts of an indissoluble whole. Accordingly, no 
one can say that the total amount of energy called 
into existence at the creation of our solar system 1s 
being added to at the present time. At any rate, 
so far as modern science can judge of the matter, 
the total amount of energy available for our world 
is a fixed quantity ; and its amount and the terms 
on which it was to be available for our use were 
fixed or finished “from the foundation of the 
world.” While it is a very significant fact in this 
connection that with all the multiform speculations 
which have been made as to the physical source of 
the sun’s heat, no explanation wholly satisfactory 
has yet been made as to how this energy coming 


THE ORIGIN OF ENERGY 35 


to us from the sun is constantly replenished or 
maintained. 
II 

The desire to find a material cause for all phe- 
nomena is instinctive in the human mind, and has 
proved the chief impetus in a thousand discoveries. 
And yet, unless we are on our guard, it 1s liable to 
be a source of real error whenever we are dealing 
with the deeper problems of thought. For when 
we have pushed our way into the inner sanctuary 
of any department of nature, we almost invariably 
come upon a deep chasm that we can pass over 
only by building a bridge of words. Some of 
these verbal bridges have been decorated with 
very dignified names, such as “the luminiferous 
ether,” “ gravity,” “chemical affinity ”; and when 
we have shifted from the one side of the chasm to 
the other we impose upon the credulity of the 
public (and even ourselves) by giving out the im- 
pression that these words represent the real ob- 
jective bridge on which we crossed. 

In how many ways do we by our theories dodge 
the crucial problem of how energy is really trans- 
mitted, that is, how matter can act on distant 
matter across seemingly vacant space. Gravity, 
and indeed all the forms of the attractive forces, 
come under this head. True, we observe certain 
‘ regularities in the way in which these phenomena 
occur, and the phenomenon at one place seems to be 
somehow dependent on some exercise of force at 
another place. And so we invent an ingenious 


36 Q. E. D. 


theory, and fortify it all around with ponderous 
algebraic artillery for defense against all attack. 
And by persistent use of such theories we hypnotize 
ourselves into the belief that we are truly scientific 
in method, and are dealing with objective realities, 
and that these learned theories are something more 
than pretentious masks to hide our ignorance of 
real nature; when in reality these theories seem to 
be only a material screen to shield us from an em- 
barrassing near view of the immediate action of 
God in all the various phenomena of the world; 
for not many find it a comfortable thought thus to 
live continuously beneath the great Taskmaster’s 
eye. 

The theory of the luminiferous ether as the 
medium of the transmission of light is one of these 
pretentious bridges of words. Our advancing 
knowledge of electro-magnetic phenomena may 
some day drive us back to a modified form of the 
corpuscular theory of light, and then we can throw 
this of the ether to the winds. In that case we 
would at least have a real material cause for the 
phenomena with which we deal. While the current 
theory of the ether has so many inconsistencies, 
and attempts to bridge over so many real chasms 
in our thinking that it seems truly astonishing to 
see it taught so long. By the theory of the ether 
the problems are not solved, they are merely post- 
poned or evaded; for while solving one difficulty 
it creates a multitude of its own. How then are 
we better off than before without any such theory ? 


THE ORIGIN OF ENERGY 37 


Being at liberty to invent any sort of qualities 
for their ether, scientists have tried to imagine such 
a substance as they think they need. The ether 
must be a kind of matter; but unlike any matter 
that we know of it cannot have weight, or else it 
would gravitate together here and there, thus be- 
coming more abundant in some places than in 
others; whereas the need is for a material abso- 
lutely uniform throughout space, even throughout 
the interiors of solid bodies, such as the earth and 
the bodies upon the earth. 

Another reason for supposing the ether to be a 
plenum, filling absolutely all space, is that 1t must 
be perfectly frictionless ; and for this reason it can- 
not be composed of particles with spaces between 
them. It must be frictionless, for otherwise the 
planets would be retarded in their motions through 
space. The earth, for instance, is moving along its 
orbit at the rate of eighteen miles a second ; and 
yet the ether does not pile up in front of it, nor is 
it made rarer in the wake of the earth. Moreover, 
during the thousands of years during which astron- 
omers have been making observations absolutely no 
retardation has been detected in the motions of the 
earth or of any of the heavenly bodies, even to the 
smallest fraction of a second. 

It is necessary to make the ether absolutely 
elastic and absolutely rigid. We are acquainted 
with many materials that are elastic, and with some 
that are comparatively rigid. But the elastic sub- 
stances that we are acquainted with are not rigid, 


3 8 Q. E. D. 


and the rigid substances are not elastic; and to 
assume such contradictory qualities in the ether 
transports us far beyond the bounds of experi- 
mental science. 

These are but a few of the difficulties raised by 
the assumption of the ether as a real entity; but as 
there is no means of demonstrating its existence, 
except by arguing the necessety of having such a 
medium to transmit radiant energy, it follows that 
no multiplication of objections to the theory is 
likely to refute it in the minds of those who feel 
this necessity. Those who refuse to admit the 
possibility of “action at a distance,” who insist on 
inventing a connecting material medium between 
every observed effect and some material object 
with which it seems to be in causal connection, 
will, I suppose, have to be allowed to exercise their 
ingenuity in any way to satisfy their minds, even 
though they may have to revise their theory with 
every fresh discovery in optics or radioactivity. 

There are many other ingenious mental devices, 
like this of the ether, which seem to me only ma- 
terialistic efforts to postpone or to dodge the real 
vital lessons to be read from natural phenomena,— 
efforts to push the real Cause back one step farther 
into the shadow,—a last desperate effort, in the 
face of the constantly accumulating evidence of 
modern knowledge that the great First Cause is 
far more intimately connected with life and motion 
than many are willing to believe. We have already 
mentioned gravity and the other attractive forces, 


THE ORIGIN OF ENERGY 39 


such as cohesion and adhesion; but seemingly very 
few people have ever paused to consider how utterly 
inexplicable they still remain in any physical or 
materialistic sense. 

It is easy to explain any form of a push ina 
physical way ; but gravity is not a push but a pull. 
And how are we to explain the method by which a 
body can act where it is not, how explain in detail 
the way by which it can reach out and pull in 
toward itself another separated body, and exert 
this pull across the immeasurably wide fields of 
space? The law of inverse squares may tell us 
very accurately the manner in which the results 
are accomplished, for our Creator is a God of order. 
But there is no materialistic theory of the why of 
gravitation that is worth employing the time of 
sensible, truth-loving people. And we can rest 
assured that there never will be any such real 
“explanation,” save that this is the way which the 
great Jehovah has ordained. Since such theories 
only explain the known in terms of the unknown, 
they can serve only as a sort of mental buffer or 
shield between us and the conception of the direct 
working of a personal God, whose word must 
always be as effective throughout the remotest 
corners of His universe as near at hand, for the very 
simple reason that matter has no “ properties ” 
which He has not imparted to it, and accordingly it 
can have no innate inertia or reluctance to act 
which God’s word would need to overcome in order 
to induce it to act, even when this word operates 


40 Q. E. D. 


across the wide fields of space. On this explanation 
these phenomena of “action ata distance” are at 
least intelligible ; while to me, and I speak now as 
a scientist, they are intelligible in no other way. 


Iil 


There is another line of thought which has to do 
with living organisths, but which I shall beg leave 
to anticipate and bring in here at the close of this 
chapter, since it follows as a direct corollary from 
the law of the Conservation of Energy. Indeed, 
we might even term it the biological aspect of that 
law. 

As we have seen, we can neither create energy 
nor destroy it; though we can Jose 2,—so far as 
this earth is concerned. The vast fund of energy 
that daily comes streaming to us from the sun is 
transmuted back and forth in a thousand ways, 
though little by little it is dissipated off into space, 
and we are dependent upon a fresh supply from the 
ever replenished fountain. 

Just so, though in a somewhat idealistic sense, is 
it with what we may term vital energy. Cells, 
organisms, even whole races, are subject to degen- 
eration and decay. They cannot acquire higher 
powers, though they may gradually lose what they 
already have; as Bateson has recently told us that 
whatever evolution there is must be by loss and 
not by gain. Water very easily runs down hill, 
but cannot go up hill in and of itself. Just so with 
the types of organic life. It was not merely an 


THE ORIGIN OF ENERGY 41 


idle sneer of the witty Frenchman, that science has 
not yet explained how an ancestor can transmit 
what he has not got himself. He cannot always 
transmit all that he himself actually possesses of 
nature’s gifts. Vitality becomes lowered, and the 
type degenerates. Weismann has emphasized this 
idea in his doctrine of “panmixia,” or the with- 
drawal of selection, which always results in degen- 
eration. Selection, artificial or natural, may serve 
to counteract this universal tendency of organic 
life, but only approximately. As Sir William 
Dawson says, “ All things left to themselves tend 
to degenerate.” Little by little the endowment of 
vitality bestowed upon our world at the beginning 
has, like radiant energy, been returned to God who 
gave it; but, unlike the case of radiant energy, the 
Creator has not established any regular source of 
vital supply from without, no elixir of life for 
organic nature in general. There is no longer 
within easy reach a tree of life from which we may 
pluck and eat and live forever. And as the in- 
dividual grows old and dies, so do species and even 
whole tribes degenerate and become extinct. 


‘¢ From scarpéd cliff and quarried stone 
She cries, ‘ A thousand types are gone.’ ”’ 


The glorious flood of vitality, so prodigally lav- 
ished upon our world in the beginning, has been 
ebbing lower and lower ; and the theory of organic 
nature steadily advancing from the lower to the 


42, Q. E.. D. 


higher is manifestly just as puerile as the old hope 
of creating energy by a perpetual-motion machine, 
—and a mistake of precisely the same nature. 
Both are contradicted by the magnificent law of 
the Conservation of Energy, which, as we have 
said, is only the scientific expression of the Scriptural 
statement that Creation is completed, so far as our 
world is concerned ; though, as the “ wages of sin,” 
death has been decreed upon the individual, and 
degeneration more or less marked upon every 
organic type. The fossils of the past, as well as 
our own experience within the historic period, con- 
firm the view already arrived at on other grounds 
that Oreation ts a completed work and is not now 
going on ; and the universal testimony from organic 
nature is that degeneration and decay have marked 
the history of every living form. Just as the in- 
dividual grows old and dies, so do species degener- 
ate and become extinct. 


aa 
LIFE ONLY FROM LIFE 


vi I | O biological generalization rests on a 
wider series of observations, or has been 
subjected to a more critical scrutiny, 

than that every living organism has come into 

existence from a living portion or portions of a pre- 
existing organism.” ' 

“Was there anything so absurd as to believe that 
a number of atoms, by falling together of their own 
accord, could make a sprig of moss, a microbe, a 
living animal? . . . It is utterly absurd. 

Here scientific thought is compelled to accept the 

idea of creative power. Forty years ago I asked 

Liebig . . . if he believed that the grass and 

flowers, which we saw around us, grew by mere 

mechanical force. He answered, ‘No more than I 

could believe that a book of botany describing them 

could grow by mere chemical force.’ ” ? 

“Let them not imagine that any hocus-pocus of, 
electricity or viscous fluids would make a living 
cell. . . . Nothing approaching’ to a cell of 
living creature has ever yet been made. 


1P, C. Mitchell, in Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. III, p. 952. 
2 Lord Kelvin in the London Times, May 4, 1903. 
43 


44 0, sD, 


No artificial process whatever could make living 
matter out of dead.” * 


¥ 


Ever since René Descartes, in his Holland lab- 
oratory, dissected the heads of great numbers of 
animals in order to discover the processes of imag- 
ination and memory, men have been seeking a 
physical or materialistic answer to such questions 
as, What is life? What is it to be alive? How 
shall we distinguish the living from the not-living ? 

No one of to-day, in the light of the correlation 
of vital processes with the general law of the con- 
servation of energy, believes that life in plants and 
animals is a separate entity which may exist outside 
of and apart from matter. In a scientific sense, 
we only know life by its association with living 
matter, which in its simplest form is known as 
protoplasm. The latter has been termed the phys- 
ical basis of life, and so far as we know every ma- 
terial living thing is composed wholly of protoplasm 
and of the structures which it has built up. 

This grayish, viscid, slimy, semi-transparent, 
semi-fluid substance, similar to the white of an 
egg, is the most puzzling, the most wonderful ma- 
terial with which science has to deal. Chemically 
it is composed of various proteids, fats, carbohy- 
drates, etc., and these in turn of but very few ele- 
ments, all of which are common, and none of which 
are peculiar to protoplasm itself. And yet its es- 


1 Lord Kelvin, to a class of Medical Students, October 28, 1904. 


LIFE ONLY FROM LIFE AB 


sential properties, its mechanical as well as its 
chemical make-up, have baffled the resources of 
our wisest men with all their retorts and micro- 
scopes and other instruments of precision. 

Protoplasm is essentially uniform and similar in 
appearance and properties wherever found, whether 
in the tissues of the human body, in a blade of 
grass, or in the green slime of a stagnant pool. 
And yet probably no two samples of protoplasm 
are ever exactly similar in all respects, though we 
may never be able to detect their precise differ- 
ences. These differences are due to the fact that 
the stuff is alzve, and within it are constantly going 
on those changes accompanying metabolism, or the 
building up and tearing down processes that always 
accompany life. All separate masses of protoplasm, 
such as the one-celled amoeba or the individual cells 
of our own bodies, are constantly taking in food 
and as constantly throwing off wastes. Hence, in 
the very nature of things, it is impossible to find 
any mass of protoplasm absolutely pure. And a 
further and impassable barrier to chemical analysis, 
or indeed to any adequate scientific examination, 
lies in the fact that we can never deal with proto- 
plasm exactly as it is, since no analysis can be per- 
formed upon it without destroying its life. And 
yet even dead protoplasm, and especially its most 
characteristic constituent, protecd, has been found 
the most difficult material in the world to analyze, 
and nobody as yet pretends to know its exact 
chemical make-up. 


46 0. E..D. 


The constant effort of natural science to press 
back the boundaries of the unknown is very liable 
to obscure some of the things most essential to any 
system of clear thinking regarding these matters. 
We are so prone to think that if only our micro- 
scopes were a little stronger, if only we could de- 
vise more effective methods of staining or of chem- 
ical analysis or chemical synthesis, we might really 
find out what life is, or what matter itself is; in 
short, that we might be able to solve in a scientific 
way the old, old riddle of existence. But already 
we have about reached the limits of the powers of 
the microscope; and even if we could devise a way 
of seeing the ultimate structures of which proto- 
plasm is composed, how would we be any better 
off ? Would we not have to attribute to each con- 
stituent of this living substance the properties which 
we now attribute to the whole ?—that is, the proper- 
ties which we attribute to masses of protoplasmic 
units, such as plants, or birds, or human beings ? 

We look at ourselves and we feel sure that we 
have a separate and real existence, that we are 
rationally conscious and are endowed with choice 
and \free will. We can say almost as much for an 
intelligent bird or dog. But we hesitate to say 
how many of these powers or characteristics of 
free and independent personality can be assigned 
to the unicellular organisms, such as the amoeba 
or the corpuscles of our blood. These one-celled 
creatures are also alive, are just as truly alive as 
are those composed of many cells. Even the 


LIFE ONLY FROM LIFE 47 


corpuscles of which our bodies are composed move, 
and eat, and grow, and seem really endowed with 
intelligence like the higher forms of life. Suppose 
we could go further than is now possible and could 
lay bare the ultimate make-up of the chromatin of 
these one-celled creatures, would we even then be 
able to prove that life with all its properties is 
inherent in these material components of the cells ? 
In other words, would we really solve anything 
after all? Or would we not rather be compelled 
to acknowledge that the simplest, the most truly 
rational view of the question is that in living mat- 
ter we have merely a special manifestation of the 
presence and the direct action of the God of nature 
which we cannot so readily recognize in not-living 
matter? This, it seems to me, is all that we really 
know, and all that we are likely ever to know. 
When we examine carefully the differences be- 
tween the living and the not-living, we see that the 
chief difference between them is in thew origun. 
The matter of growth is not a real distinction ; for 
crystals grow on the outside, while inorganic liquids 
grow by intussusception, as when a soluble sub- 
stance is added to them, in very much the same 
way as an animal grows by the ingestion of food. 
Even movement is hardly an absolute distinction 
between the living and the not-living; for no 
movement can be detected in quiescent seeds, 
which may lie dormant for thousands of years; 
and on the other hand inorganic foams when 
brought into contact with liquids of different com- 


48 ( Q. E D. 


position display movements that very closely simu- 
late those of the living matter. Lastly, irritability, 
though so notably characteristic of living matter, 
is scarcely peculiar to it, for many inorganic sub- 
stances seem almost as definitely responsive to 
external stimulation. But in the matter of their 
origin there is a real and a most fundamental 
difference. All livmg substance arises only from 
other substance already living. It cannot arise 
from the not-living; or at least it never has done 
so since the beginning of scientific observation, 
though on this point have been concentrated the 
learning and the laboratory technique of thousands 
of chemists and microscopists. 

It may not be out of place to quote here from 
one of the classics dealing with this subject,— 
words that are just as true to-day as when first 
written nearly half a century ago: 

“Let us place vividly in our imagination the 
picture of the two great kingdoms of nature,—the 
inorganic and the organic,—as these now stand in 
the light of the Law of Biogenesis. What essen- 
tially is involved in saying that there is no spon- 
taneous generation of life? It is meant that the 
passage from the mineral world to the plant or ani- 
mal world is hermetically sealed on the mineral side. 
This inorganic world is staked off from the living 
world by barriers that have never yet been crossed 
from within. No change of substance, no modifica- 
tion of environment, no chemistry, no electricity, nor 
any form of energy, nor any evolution, can endow 


LIFE ONLY FROM LIFE 49 


a single atom of the mineral world with the attri- 
bute of life. Only by the bending down into this 
dead world of some living form can these dead 
atoms be gifted with the properties of vitality ; 
without this preliminary contact with life they 
remain fixed in the inorganic sphere forever. 

“Tt is a very mysterious law which guards in 
this way the portals of the living world. And if 
there is one thing in nature more worth pondering 
for its strangeness, it is the spectacle of this vast 
helpless world of the dead cut off from the living 
by the Law of Biogenesis, and denied forever the 
possibility of resurrection within itself. The 
physical laws may explain the inorganic world; 
the biological laws may account for the develop- 
ment of the organic. But of the point where they 
meet,—of that strange border-land between the 
dead and the living,—science is silent. It is as if 
God had placed everything in earth and heaven in 
‘the hands of nature, but had reserved a point at 
the genesis of life for His direct appearing.” * 

It would be superfluous to emphasize further this 
great outstanding fact that the not-living cannot 
become the living by any of the processes which 
we call natural; and it would be presumptuous to 
attempt to emulate these eloquent words by seek- 
ing to emphasize the completeness with which this 
great Law of Biogenesis confirms the truth of a 
real Creation; for the supreme grandeur and im- 


Henry Drummond, ‘‘ Natural Law in the Spiritual World,’’ 
Chapter I, 


50 Ol UE. YD. 


portance of this law could be only obscured by so 
doing. 
Il 

Perhaps some of the most impressive lessons on 
this subject will be found in connection with the 
history of the discovery of this great Law of bio- 
genesis, which says that life can come only from life. 
For by studying the history of the way in which 
this great Law has been established, we cannot fail 
to be impressed with the thought that back of all 
the complex array of living forms in our modern 
world which go on perpetuating themselves in. 
orderly ways according to natural law, they could 
have originated only by a direct and real Creation, 
essentially and radically different from any proc- 
esses now going on. 

The wisest of the ancients in Greece and Rome 
knew nothing of this great law as we now know 
it. Aristotle, the embodiment of all that the an- 
cient world knew of natural science, expressly 
taught that the lower forms of animals, such as_ 
fleas and worms, even mice and frogs, sprang up 
spontaneously from the moist earth, “ All dry 
bodies,” he declared, “ which become damp, and all 
damp bodies which are dried, engender animal life.” 
According to Vergil, bees are produced from the 
putrifying entrails of a young bull. Such were the 
teachings -of all the Greeks and Romans, even of 
the scientists of the post-Reformation period, some 
of whom had accumulated a very considerable 
stock of knowledge concerning plants and animals. 


LIFE ONLY FROM LIFE 51 


And similar absurdities continued to be taught 
until comparatively modern times. Van Helmont, 
a celebrated alchemist physician who flourished dur- 
ing the brilliant reign of Louis XIV, wrote: “ The 
smells which arise from the bottom of morasses 
produce frogs, slugs, leeches, grasses, and other 
things.” As a recipe for producing a pot of mice 
offhand, he says that the only thing necessary is 
partly to fill a vessel with corn and plug up the 
mouth of the vessel with an old dirty shirt. In 
about twenty-one days, the ferment arising from 
the dirty shirt reacting with the odor from the 
corn will effect the transmutation of the wheat 
into mice. The doctor solemnly assures us that he 
himself had witnessed this wonderful fact, and 
continues, ‘The mice are born full-grown; there 
are both males and females. To reproduce the 
species it suffices to pair them.” 

“Scoop out a hole in a brick,” he says further, 
“put into it some sweet basil, crushed, lay a second 
brick upon the first so that the hole may be com- 
pletely covered. Expose the two bricks to the sun, 
and at the end of a few days the smell of the sweet 
basil, acting as a ferment, will change the herb 
into real scorpions.” ’ 

Sir Thomas Browne, the famous author of “ Re- 
ligio Medici,” had expressed a doubt as to whether 
mice may be bred by putrifaction; but another 
scientist, Alexander Ross, disposed of this sugges- 
tion by the following line of argument which was 

‘ 1“ Youis Pasteur, His Life and Labors,’’ p. 89. 


52 O;E.D; 


supposed to be conclusive as a reductio ad ab- 
surdum : : 

“So may he (Sir Thomas Browne) doubt whether 
in cheese and timber worms are generated ; or if 
beetles and wasps in cows’ dung; or if butterflies, 
locusts, grasshoppers, shell-fish, snails, eels, and such 
_ like, be procreated of putrid matter, which is apt 
to receive the form.of that creature to which it is 
by formative power disposed. To question this is 
to question reason, sense and experience. If he 
doubts this let him go to Egypt, and there he will 
find the fields swarming with mice, begot of the 
mud of Nylus, to the great calamity of the in- 
habitants.” * 

When we remember that such nonsense consti- 
tuted the wisdom of the scientific world only about 
two centuries ago, we begin to realize the fact that 
the doctrine of Biogenesis is indeed a very modern 
doctrine. But it may be well to ask in passing, 
How could the people of former ages understand 
or appreciate the great truth of Creation as we 
moderns are able to do? 

The first important step toward the refutation 
of this old pagan doctrine of spontaneous genera- 
tion was made by the Italian, Redi, in 1668. He 
noticed that flies are always present around de- 
composing meat before the appearance of maggots, 
and he devised an experiment to keep the flies 
away from actual contact with the meat. The 
meat putrified as usual, but did not breed mag- 

1 Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. I, p. 64. 


LIFE ONLY FROM LIFE 53 


gots ; while the same kind of meat exposed in open 
jars swarmed with them. He next placed some 
meat in a jar with some wire gauze over the top. 
The flies were attracted by the smell of the meat 
as usual, but could not reach the meat. Instead 
they laid their eggs upon the gauze, where they 
hatched in due time, while no maggots were gener- 
ated in the meat. Thus from this time onward it 
became gradually understood that, at least in the 
case of all the larger and higher forms of life, 
Harvey’s dictum, as announced some years pre- 
viously, was true, and that life comes only from 
life. | 
But the invention of the microscope opened the 
way for a renewal of the controversy regarding 
the origin of life. Bacteria were discovered in 
1683; and it was soon observed that no precau- 
tions with screens or other stoppers could prevent 
bacteria and other low organisms from breeding in 
myriads in every kind of organic matter. Here 
apparently was an entirely new foundation for the 
doctrine of spontaneous generation. It was freely 
admitted that all the higher forms of life arise only 
by process of natural generation from others of 
their own kind; but did not these microscopic 
organisms prove that there was “a perpetual 
abiogenetic fount by which the first steps in the 
evolution of living organisms continued to arise, 
under suitable conditions, from inorganic matter ” ?’ 
The famous “ barnacle-geese ” ought not to be 
1 Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. I, p. 64, 


54 Q. ne D. 


omitted from any sketch of the vicissitudes of this 
doctrine of Biogenesis. An elaborate illustrated 
account covering their alleged natural history was 
printed in one of the early volumes of the Royal 
Society of London. Buds of a particular tree grow- 
ing near the sea were described as producing bar- 
nacles, and these falling into the water were al- 
leged to be transmuted into geese. Nor should 
we omit mention of Huxley’s Bathybius Haeckel, 
a slimy substance supposed to exist in great masses 
in the depths of the ocean and to consist of undif- 
ferentiated protoplasm, the exhaustless fountain 
from which all other forms of life had been de- 
rived. Not long after Huxley had given it a 
formal scientific name in 1868, it was discovered 
to be merely a precipitate of gypsum thrown down 
from sea water by alcohol, and thus a product of 
clumsy manipulation in the laboratory, instead of 
a natural product of the deep sea. The disappoint- 
ment of those opposing biogenesis was severe ; but 
the lesson is still of value to the world to-day. 

The masterly work of Tyndall and Louis Pasteur in 
doing for the bacteria and protozoa what Redi had 
done for the larger organisms, is too much a matter 
of modern contemporary history to need recital here. 
Upon this great truth of life only from life is based 
all the recent advances in the treatment and pre-— 
vention of germ diseases and all the triumphs of 
modern surgery. The housewife puts up canned 
fruit with the utmost confidence because she be- 
lieves in this great Law of Biogenesis. It is because 


LIFE ONLY FROM LIFE 55 


we all believe in it that we use antiseptics and 
fumigators and fly screens. 


III 


But what are the lessons to be learned from this 
great fact, and what bearing has this fact on the 
old Bible doctrine of a literal Creation ? 

Life comes now only from preéxisting life. But 
at some time there was no life on the globe. It 
- does not take any great exercise of “ philosophic 
faith,” as Huxley suggested, “to look beyond the 
abyss of geologically recorded time ” and recognize 
that at this beginning of things there must have 
taken place a most wonderful event, essentially 
and radically different from anything now going 
on, namely, the beginning of organic life. But 
would not this be a real Creation in the old-fash- 
ioned sense of this term? We cannot avoid this 
conclusion ; nor is there anything in either science 
or philosophy to indicate that this creation of the 
living from the not-living was confined to one 
mere speck of protoplasm. It is absolutely certain 
that it required a real Creation to produce life 
from the not-living at all; and it is just as reasona- 
ble that this exercise of creative power may have 
taken place in all parts of the earth at the same 
general tume, as the Bible teaches. For if a Being 
saw fit to create life at all, why should He stop 
with one or two bits of protoplasmic units? An 
architect who can make his own bricks and other 
building material, can surely build what he desires 


BEV Q. E. D. 


out of these materials. Common sense tells us 
that, if the Creator really created life in the be- 
ginning, He did not stop with a few specks of 
protoplasm here and there over the earth. The 
ability to create life from the not-living implies 
the ability to make full-grown trees or birds or 
beasts in twenty-four hours, instead of waiting for 
months or years, as is usual at the present time. 

As we havgalready found regarding matter and 
energy, so of life. The record in Genesis 1s con- 
firmed, for modern science compels us to believe in 
Creation as the only possible origin of life,—a 
Creation entirely different from anything now 
going on, and one that can never be made to fit 
into any scheme of uniformitarian evolution. 


IV 
THE CELL AND THE LESSONS IT TEACHES 


I 


ITH his usual vigor and expressiveness 
W Henry Drummond has given us a pic- 
ture of the remarkable fact that the cells 
of all plants and animals are strikingly alike, es- 
pecially the single cells from which all originate. 
It is easy for any one to distinguish between an 
oak, a palm tree, and a lichen, while a botanist 
will have elaborate scientific distinctions which he 
can discern between them. “ Butif the first young 
germs of these three plants are placed before him,” 
says Drummond, and the botanist is called upon to 
define the difference, “he finds it impossible. He 
cannot even say which is which. Examined under 
the highest powers of the microscope, they yield 
no clue. Analyzed by the chemist, with all the 
appliances of his laboratory, they keep their secret. 
“The same experiment can be tried with the 
embryos of animals. Take the ovule of the worm, 
the eagle, the elephant, and of man himself. Let 
the most skilled observer apply the most searching 
tests to distinguish the one from the other, and he 
will fail. | 
“But there is something more surprising still. 
57 


58 O; VED, 


Compare next the two sets of germs, the vegetable 
and the animal, and there is no shade of difference. 
Oak: and palm, worm and man, all start in life to- 
gether. No matter into what strangely different 
forms they may afterwards develop, no matter 
whether they are to live on sea or land, creep or 
fly, swim or walk, think or vegetate,—in the em- 
bryo, as it first meets the eye of science, they are 
indistinguishable. The apple which fell in New- 
ton’s garden, Newton’s dog Diamond, and Newton 
himself, began life at the same point.” ? 

In these remarks, of course, Drummond is deal- 
ing with the unicellular primal form, “as it first 
meets the eye of science” ; and while certain slight 
peculiarities (such as the constant number of chro- 
mosomes) have been detected as characteristic of 
the cells of certain forms, yet for all practical pur- 
poses these words of Drummond are just as true 
to-day as when first written. Possibly it 1s be- 
cause of a failure in our technique or from a lack 
of power in our microscopes that these wonderful 
protoplasmic units from which all living things 
originate seem identical. But it is equally possible 
that they are really identical in structure and in 
chemical composition, and that only the ever pres- 
ent watchcare of the great Author of nature directs 
the one to develop in a certain manner, “after its 
kind,’ and another in still another manner, “ after 
its kind.” At any rate, the protoplasm of which. 
they are all alike composed zs identical wherever 

1*¢Natural Law,’’ Chapter X, 


THE CELL 59 


found, so far as any scientific tests have yet been 
able to determine. 


II 


There are many varieties of single cells known to 
science which maintain an independent individual 
existence. Among the unicellular plants are the 
bacteria, while the unicellular animals are known 
as the protozoa. And although perhaps I ought to 
apologize to the reader for seeming to anticipate 
here a part of the discussion of the problem of 
“species,” yet it seems necessary to say a few 
words here regarding the “persistence” of these 
unicellular forms. 

Among the diseases which have been proved to 
be due to protozoa are malaria, amoebic dysentery, 
and syphilis; while among the much larger number 
which are due to bacteria, bacilli, or other vegetable 
parasites, are cholera, typhoid fever, the plague, 
pneumonia, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and leprosy. 

One of the difficulties attending the study of 
“species” among the higher forms of plants and 
animals has always been the length of time re- 
quired to obtain any large number of generations 
on which to make observations. In the case of 
such plants as peas, wheat, corn, or indeed almost 
any form of plant life, it is only with difficulty that 
more than one generation a year can be obtained ; 
and when two or more generations a year are pro- 
duced, they are produced under more or less un- 
natural conditions. So that it takes almost a life- 


60 OED. 


time carefully to test and record in a thoroughly 
scientific way the results of any extensive experi- 
ments regarding variation and heredity. 

In the case of mice or rats or rabbits or guinea 
pigs, many more generations can be obtained ina 
few years; but in the case of the larger kinds of 
animals the time taken for development to maturity 
and for gestation is often much prolonged; and 
scientific observation of an exact character has been 
in vogue for so short a time that there has always 
been the chance for advocates of evolution to take 
refuge under the plea that, if we only had longer 
_ and more carefully conducted observations, we could 

* really see species in the making, one form becom- 
ing transformed into a distinct form, or perhaps 
giving rise to another and distinct form as an 
offshoot. 

But in the case of the bacteria and protozoa, we 
can have a new generation every hour or so, some- 
times every half hour. True, these forms of minute 
life have been under observation for only a few 
years; but their effects have in many cases been 
observed for almost the entire length of human 
history. No physician would tolerate the sugges- 
tion that the bacillus of cholera can produce the 
symptoms of diphtheria, or the tubercle bacillus 
produce the symptoms of leprosy. Nor will any 
scientist deny that such diseases as the plague, 
tuberculosis, or diphtheria are identical with dis- 
eases which ravaged Rome or Greece or Egypt . 
thousands of years ago. And as the symptoms of 


THE CELL 61 


these modern diseases are similar to those recorded 
by acute observers in Greece or Egypt two thou- 
sand years or more ago, we must conclude that the 
organisms causing these symptoms are doubtless 
identical. Similar remarks might be made regard- 
ing fermentation and other forms of decay. 

In the case of a form of bacteria which reaches 
maturity and redivides in half an hour, the number 
of individual forms existing at the end of two days 
would need about twenty-eight figures to represent 
it. Doubtless these forms never multiply at this 
rate uninterruptedly for any great length of time, 
or else they would occupy the whole world to the 
exclusion of every other form of life. And doubt- 
less instances arise where the period of growth to 
maturity and division is prolonged to several times 
the half-hour period mentioned above. But in any 
case, as we contemplate the length of time during 
which such well marked diseases as diphtheria, lep-’ 
rosy, or the plague have been known, we must 
acknowledge that these unicellular forms seem to 
breed true during a most astonishingly long period. 
How can we deny that this “persistence” of these 
unicellular forms constitutes a very strong argument 
in favor of the “ fixity ” of these forms ? 


III 


But we must proceed to examine the behavior 
of the various kinds of cells of which the various 
multicellular organisms are composed. 

Plants were known to be composed of cells, and 


62 0.’ ED. 


their cells were studied and described some years 
before it was understood that animals also are com- 
posed of cells as units. Even then, however, the 
first propounders of the cell theory (Schleiden and 
Schwann) had no clear or accurate idea of the ori- 
gin of cells, or of their essential characters and 
structure. As to origin, they supposed that cells 
arose by a sort of crystallization from a mother 
liquor ; and as to structure, they looked upon the 
cell-wall as the really important part, the fluid con- 
tents being quite subordinate. Hugo von Mohl 
(1846) applied to the fluid contents of the cell the 
term “ protoplasm,” and Max Schultze (1861) showed 
that this protoplasm is really identical in all organ- 
isms, plants and animals, also that the cell-wall is 
frequently absent in many animal tissues and in 
many unicellular forms, indicating that the proto- 
plasm is the really important substance. By this 
time also it had become known that cells never arise 
de novo, as had been supposed by the earlier inves- 
tigators, but that cells arise only by division of pre- 
existing cells; or as Rudolf Virchow (1858) ex- 
pressed it, “omnes cellula e cellula.” 

It was, however, many years. before the details 
of the growth and reproduction of the cells (cell- 
division) became well understood. Not until the 
last quarter of the nineteenth century was it settled 
that the nucleus of the cell is also a supremely im- 
portant part; but finally in 1882 Flemming was 
able to extend Virchow’s aphorism to the nucleus 
also: omnis nucleus e nucleo. 


THE CELL 63 


Since these discoveries our knowledge of the 
methods of cell-division has much increased; and 
in the light of our modern knowledge of these mat- 
ters there is nothing in all nature more marvellous 
than the regular orderly way in which cells repro- 
duce themselves according to fixed laws. Certain 
cells in the developing embryo, for example, are 
early set apart for a particular function or for 
building certain structures, and thereafter are never 
diverted from this duty so as to do a different work 
or produce a different kind of structure. In the 
young embryo certain structures arise at certain 
predestined times in particular places, and only there 
and out of these cells alone. As to why it should be 
so, we cannot tell, save as the result of deliberate 
design and as an expression of the order-loving 
mind of the God of nature. In the words of one of 
the greatest of modern authorities, “ We still do not 
know why a certain cell becomes a gland-cell, 
another a gangleon-cell; why one cell gives rise to 
smooth muscle-fiber, while a neighbor forms volun- 
tary muscle. . . . It is daily becoming more 
apparent that epigenesis with the three layers of 
the germ furnishes no explanation of developmental 
phenomena.” ’ 

In accordance with the general principle of a 
division of labor, certain cells become early set 
apart to particular functions, and in accordance with 
the varying demands of these functions the devel- 
oping cells may become greatly changed in form 

1 Nature, May 23, 1901. 


64 Q. E. D. 


and in vital characteristics. That is, one cell spe- 
clalizes, let us say, in secretion, another in contrac- 
tility, another in receiving and carrying stimuli, ete. 
In this way we will have the gland-cell, the mus- 
cle-cell, and the nerve-cell, each cell destined to pro- 
duce one of these organs developing others “ after 
its kind,” the result being that it is soon surrounded 
with numerous companions doing a similar work, 
making up in this way a particular tissue or organ 
—giland, muscle, or nerve—which in the aggregate 
has for its function the work of the particular cells 
composing it. 

But the important thing for us to remember in 
this connection is that when cells once become thus 
differentiated off and dedicated to any particular 
function, they can never grow or develop into any 
distinctly different type of cell with other and dif- 
Jerent functions. It is true that through pathologic 
degeneration the form and even the function of 
cells may become greatly changed; but never does 
it amount to a complete metamorphosis or complete 
transformation into another distinctly different type. 

This is a very important principle, and it contains 
so many lessons for us bearing on the philosophy of 
life in general that it may be allowable to establish 
this fact by several somewhat lengthy quotations 
from standard authorities. 

The first will be from one of the highest authori- 
ties on embryology, Charles Sedgwick Minot, of 
Harvard : | 

“Tn accordance with this law [of differentiation] 


THE CELL 65 


we encounter no instances, ecther tin normal or 
pathological development, of the transformation of a 
cell of one kind of tissue into a cell of another kind 
of tissue; and further we encounter no instances of 
a differentiated cell being transformed back into an 
undifferentiated cell of the embryonic type with 
varied potentialities.” * 

Again, we have the following from one of the 
foremost pathologists, as to the strict and rather 
narrow limits of even pathologic change: 

“Epithelium and glandcells . . . never be- 
come converted into bone or cartilage, or vice versa ; 
while, again, it may be laid down that among 
epiblastic. and hypoblastic tissues, on the one hand, 
and mesoblastic tissues on the other, there is no new 
development or metaplasia of the most highly spe- 
clalized tissues from less specialized tissues ; a sim- 
ple epithelium cannot in the vertebrate give rise to 
more complex glandular tissue, or to nerve cells; in 
regeneration of epithelium there is no new formation 
of hair roots or cutaneous glands. The cells of white 
fibrous connective tissue have not been seen to form 
striated or even non-striated muscle.” ? 

As implied by these quotations, a constant and 
progressive differentiation of cells prevails in the 
developing embryo; and when complete, certain 
groups of cells act as specialists in doing only 
certain kinds of work for the body. ‘These cells 
maintain their specific characters in a very remark- 


1 Science, March 29, 1901, p. 490. 
2J. G. Adami, ‘‘ Principles of Pathology,’’ pp. 641-642. 


66 Q. E. D. 


able degree under normal conditions. Under vari- 
ous abnormal conditions, however, these cells may 
become modified as to functions, so that cells or 
tissues of one type may assume more or less com- 
pletely the characters of another type. “ But,” as 
a very high authority declares, “ the limitations in 
this change in type are strictly drawn, so that one 
type can assume only the characters of another 
which is closely related to it. This change of one 
form of closely related tissue into another is called 
metaplasia. : 

“When differentiation has advanced so that such 
distinct types of tissue have been formed as connect- 
ive tissue, epithelium, muscle, nerve, these do not 
again merge through metaplasia. There wis no 
evidence that mesoblastic tissues can be converted 
into those of the epiblastic or hypoblastic ype, or 
vice versa.” * 

This modification of function among the cells 
which sometimes goes on in the developing embryo, 
or under pathologic conditions, is very closely 
analogous to the variation which goes on among 
species of animals and plants. But, as we shall see 
later, there is a well marked limit to this variation 
among species, just as we see there is in the varia- 
tions among thecells. Practically the same general 
laws hold good in each case. 

If cells did not maintain their ancestral charac- 
ters in a very remarkable way, what would be the 
use of grafting a good kind of fruit onto a stock of 
1 Delafield and Prudden, ‘‘ Text-Book of Pathology,’’ pp. 62, 63. 


THE CELL 67 


poorer quality? The very permanency of the 
grafts thus produced is proof of the persistency 
with which cells reproduce only “after their kind.” 


IV 

How can we fail to see the bearings of these 
facts on the doctrine of the transformation of species 
among ordinary plants and animals, which are 
merely isolated and self-contained groups of cells ? 
Do not these facts constitute strong presumptive 
evidence that among animals and plants, though 
there may be variation in plenty within certain 
limits, perhaps within even much wider limits than 
used to be thought possible, yet among these dis- 
tinct organisms, little and big, new forms develop 
only after their ancestral type, in full accord with 
the record given in the first chapter of the Bible? 

But we are now prepared to examine in more 
detail the facts as now known to modern science 
regarding “ species ” of plants and animals. 


Vv 
WHAT IS A “SPECIES” 2 


I 


E have seen that there is no way to ac- 

WW count for the origin of matter, of en- 

ergy, or of life, except by postulating a 
real Creation. 

We have seen that cells continue to maintain 
their identity, and reproduce only “after their 
kind.” 

We must now deal with the higher forms of cell 
aggregates, which we call plants and animals. It 
has long been held that these at least are mutable, 
that one kind of plant or of animal may in the 
course of ages be transformed into a distinctly dif- 
ferent type ; and of late years there has accumulated 
a very voluminous literature dealing with the 
various intricacies of this problem of the origin of 
species. How can we deal with such a large 
subject in a brief way? It seems best to confine 
our attention in this chapter to an attempt to 
answer the question, What is a species? and are 
“species” natural groups clearly delimited by 
nature ? 

II 

The term “species ” was at first used very loosely 

by scientific writers. It meant very little more 
68 


WHAT IS A “SPECIES” ? 69 


than our vague word ind does at the present time. 
Not until the time of Linnzeus (1707-1778) did the 
term acquire a definite and precise meaning. The 
aphorism of the great botanist, “ specves tot sunt 
diverse quot diverse forme ab initio sunt create” 
—“just so many species are to be reckoned as 
there were forms created in the beginning,’—was 
at least an attempt to use the term ina well-defined 
sense. Of course, this definition assumed the 
“fixity ’ of species; but with the wide prevalence 
of the views of Darwin and his followers the term 
“species ” has fallen into disrepute, and is now re- 
garded by many as only an artificial rank in clas- 
sification corresponding to no objective reality in 
the natural world. Some writers, as Lankester, 
have found so much fault with the term as to urge 
its complete abandonment in scientific literature. 
This is logical enough from the standpoint of 
Darwinism ; for if the latter be true there ought 
indeed to be such a swamping of every incipient 
“species” as to make one kind blend with others 
all around it in the classification series. 

But since the term has by no means been discarded, 
we must endeavor to determine the sense in which 
it continues to be used in good scientific literature. 

“ A species,” says Huxley, “is the smallest group 
to which distinct and invariable characters can be 
assigned.” The Standard Dictionary says that the 
term is used for “a classificatory group of animals 
or plants subordinate to a genus, and having mem- 
bers that differ among themselves only in minor 


70 02 "E'D. 


details of proportion and color, and are capable of 
fertile interbreeding indefinitely.” 

The latter authority also adds: 

“In the kingdoms of organic nature species is 
founded on identity of form and structure, and 
specifically characterized by the power of the indi- 
viduals to produce beings like themselves, who are 
in turn productive.’ 

To put the matter still more definitely before 
the reader, we quote the following from a well- 
known scientist whose writings on the subject of 
evolution have had a wide circulation : 

“There are two bases on which species may be 
founded. Species may be based on form, morpho- 
logical species; or they may be based on reproduc- 
teve functions, physiological species. By the one 
method a certain amount of difference of form, 
structure, and habit, constitutes species ; according 
to the other, if the two kinds breed freely with 
each other and the offspring is indefinitely fertile, 
the kinds are called varieties, but if they do not 
they are called species.” ' 

This author adds that this physiological test, as 
to whether or not the kinds are cross fertile, “is 
regarded as a most important test of true species, 
as contrasted with varieties or races.” 


Iii 


When we look at the matter in this light, it is 
very evident that there are multitudes of long rec- 


1 Joseph Le Conte, ‘‘ Evolution and Religious Thought,’’ p. 233, 


WHAT IS A “ SPECIES”? 71 


ognized specific distinctions that ought to be dis- 
carded. For instance, there are some twenty odd 
“species” of wild pigs scattered over the Old 
World, which Flower and Lydekker assure us 
would probably “breed freely together.”’ The 
yak and the zebu of India, and the bison of Amer- 
ica, would on this basis have to be surrendered, 
for it is well known that they will all breed freely 
with the common domestic cattle, as well as with 
one another. Perhaps all or nearly all of the 
dozen or more “species” of the genus Los would 
thus be included together. All of the dogs, wolves, 
and others of the Canidw@ might thus be considered 
as fundamentally a unit. The cats (felide) are 
well known to breed freely together, Karl Hagén- 
beck of Hamburg having crossed lions and tigers 
as well as others of the family. Practically all 
of the bears have been crossed repeatedly, and the 
progeny of these and other crosses are quite fa- 
miliar sights at the London Zodlogical Gardens. 
Among the lower forms of life even more surpris- 
ing results have been attained by Thomas Hunt 
Morgan and others. 

It would, however, be a very hasty conclusion to 
say on the basis of these facts that there are no 
natural limitations to groups of animals and plants. 
But we are entirely warranted in concluding from 
these facts that in very many cases, perhaps in 
most, our system of taxonomic classification of an- 
imals and plants has gone altogether too far, and 

1‘ Mammals Living and Extinct,’’ pp. 284-285. 


72 O; ED. 


that scientists have erected specific distinctions 
which are wholly uncalled for and which confuse 
and obscure the main issues of the species problem. 
Among the workers in botany and in every de- 
partment of zodlogy there have always been the 
“splitters” and the “ lumpers,” as they are famil- 
iarly called; the former insisting on the most mi- 
nute distinctions between their ‘ species,” thus 
multiplying them; the latter being more liberal 
and tending to diminish the number of species in 
any given group. For a generation or more in the 
recent past the “splitters” had things pretty much 
their own way; but of late there is a growing tend- 
ency to frown down the mania for creating new 
names. Even yet it is with the utmost reluctance 
that long established specific distinctions are sur- 
rendered, as is illustrated in the case of the-mam- 
moth, which is acknowledged by some of the very 
best authorities to be really indistinguishable from 
the modern Asiatic elephant. Several fossil bears 
were long listed in scientific books; but they are 
all acknowledged now to be identical with the 
modern grizzly, and as we have already intimated 
all the modern ones ought to be put together. 
These modern rationalizing methods have made 
but a slight impression on the vast complex of the 
fossil plants and animals, affecting the names of 
only a few of the larger and better known forms. 
In the realm of invertebrate paleontology, how- 
ever, the “splitters ” are still holding high carnival, 
in spite of the efforts of some very prominent 


WHAT IS A “ SPECIES”? 73 


scientists in the opposite direction. For palxon- 
tologists still follow the irrational course of invent- 
ing a new name, specific or even generic, for a 
form that happens to be found in a kind of rock 
widely separated as to “age” from the other beds 
where similar forms are accustomed to be found. 
As Angelo Heilprin expresses it, “ It is practically 
certain that numerous forms of life, exhibiting no 
distinctive characters of their own, are constituted 
into distinct species for no other reason than that 
they occur in formations widely separated from 
those holding their nearest kin.” ’ 

As a result of these methods this same author de- 
clares: “It is by no means improbable that many 
of the older genera, now recognized as distinct by 
reason of our imperfect knowledge concerning their 
true relationships, have in reality representatives 
living in the modern seas.””? | 

But the situation is very little better when we 
come to deal with plants and animals of our modern 
world. Because, with the many thousands of stu- 
dents of natural science all over the world, each 
anxious to get into print as the discoverer of some 
new form, the systematists have a dead weight of 
names on their hands that by a rational and en- 
lightened revision could doubtless be reduced to 
but a fraction of their present disheartening array. 
For as the result of the extensive breeding experi- 
ments now being carried on under the study of 


1 ‘* Geographical and Geological Distribution of Animals,’’ pp, 
183, 184. 2 Id., pp. 207, 208. 


74 Q. 1 ah D. 


what is called Mendelism (a term that will be ex- 
plained in the next chapter), it has been found that 
great numbers of the “species” of the systematists 
or classificationists will not stand the physiological 
test of breeding, that is, they are found to breed 
freely together according to the Mendelian Law. 
As William Bateson remarks: 

““We may even be certain that numbers of excel- 
lent species recognized by entomologists or orni- 
thologists, for example, would, if subjected to 
breeding tests, be immediately proved to be ana- 
lytical varreties, differing from each other merely 
in the presence or absence of definite factors.” ? 

The following from David Starr Jordan, the 
leading American authority on fishes, will serve 
to show how numerous have been the new names 
invented in recent years, all tending further to 
confuse and complicate the problem of what is a 
species : 

“In our fresh-water fishes, each species on an 
average has been described as new from three to 
four times, on account of minor variations, real or 
supposed. In Europe, where the fishes have been 
studied longer and by more different men, upwards 
of six or eight nominal species have been described 
for each one that is now considered distinct.” ? 

And again: 

“Thus the common Channel Catfish of our 
rivers has been described as a new species not 


1““ Mendel’s Principles of Heredity,’’ p, 284, 1909. 
# “ Science Sketches,’’ p. 99. 


WHAT IS A “SPECIES”? 75 


less than twenty-five times, on account of differ- 
ences real or imaginary, but comparatively trifling 
in value.” * 

Perhaps the reader will tolerate another some- 
what long quotation because of the light which it 
sheds on this whole problem. 

“Some years ago we had a parasite of a very 
destructive aphid down in our books as Lysiphlebus 
tritict. In carrying out our investigations it be- 
came necessary to find out whether this parasite 
had more than a single host insect, and whether it 
could develop in more than one species of aphid. 
To this end, recently emerged males and females 
were allowed to pair, after which the female ovi- 
posited in several species of aphids. Both parents 
were then killed and preserved and all of their 
progeny not used in further experiments were also 
preserved, and thus entire broods or families were 
kept together. In this way females were reared 
out of one host species and”allowed to oviposit in 
others, until, often after several hosts had been em- 
ployed, it would be bred back into the species 

whence it first originated. In all cases the host 
- was reared from the moment of birth, while with 
the parasite both parents and offspring were kept 
together. 

“The result of this little fragment of work was 
to send two genera and fourteen species to the ceme- 
tery—you may call it Mt. Synonym Cemetery, if 
you choose—while the insect involved is now 

1 ‘* Science Sketches,’’ p. 96, 


76 OED: 


Aphidius testacetpes. The systematist who studies 
only dried corpses will soon be out of date.’’? 


IV 


Now all this is not given to intimate that there 
is no scientific justification for the term “ species,” 
but to make plain to my non-professional readers 
what every well-informed biologist already knows, 
namely, that at the present time the “species ques- 
tion” is still in a very unsatisfactory state. The 
facts given above would strongly suggest that there 
probably is indeed such a thing as a species, in the 
sense assigned by Linnzeus, who as we have seen 
wished to make it a designation covering all the 
descendants of each distinct kind originally created. 
But this original aim of Linnzus is to-day not 
merely ignored but treated with lofty contempt ; 
for according to the prevailing theories of evolu- 
tion, all the manifold diversities of life in our mod- 
ern world have come about gradually as the result 
of a slow development by natural process, and 
hence it would be vain beyond measure to attempt. 
to determine the limits of a “species ” in the sense 
understood by Linnzeus. 

But we may conclude, from the facts presented 
above, that if there is such a naturally delimited 
group as a “species” in the Linnzan sense of the 
word, it by no means coincides with what now 
passes under this name, but might include many 


1F. M. Webster, of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, in Science, 
April 12, 1912, p. 565. 


WHAT IS A “SPECIES”? 77 


so-called species, often a whole genus, or even 
several. 

With this in mind, we must pass on to consider 
the next step in our study, as to whether new 
“species” are now coming into being in our mod- 
ern world under scientific observation, either natu- 
ral or artificial. 


Vi 
MENDELISM AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 


x AD Mendel’s work come into the hands 
of Darwin, it is not too much to say 
that the history of the development of 


evolutionary philosophy would have been very dif- 
ferent from that which we have witnessed.” ' 


Z 


From the latter part of the eighteenth century, 
attempts were continually being made to explain 
the origin of all organic forms by some system of 
development or evolution. Buffon had dwelt on 
the modifications directly induced by the environ- 
ment. Lamarck had made much use of this idea, 
claiming that such modifications were transmitted 
to posterity, and claiming the same for the struc- 
tural changes produced by use and disuse. La- 
marck’s work did not become at all popular while 
he lived, chiefly through the overpowering influ- 
ence of Baron Cuvier, who had an equally fantastic 
scheme of his own, which may well be termed a 
burlesque on Creation and in which an extreme 
fixity of “species” was a cardinal doctrine. 
Erasmus Darwin and Robert Chambers in England 
also tried to make a theory of evolution believable ; 
1 William Bateson, ‘‘ Mendel’s Principles of Heredity,’’ p. 316. 

78 


THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 79 


though their efforts were but little more successful 
in gaining the ear of the world. 

But to all that had gone before Charles Darwin 
and A. kh. Wallace (1858) added the idea of “ nat- 
ural selection,” or “the struggle for existence,” to 
use the respective terms coined by each of these 
authors, as the chief means by which the effects of 
variation are accumulated and perpetuated so as to 
build up the modern complexities of the plant and 
animal kingdoms. Partly because it was a psycho- 
logical moment, from the fact that the uniformita- 
rian geology of Lyell with its graded advance of 
existences from age to age seemed absolutely to 
demand some evolutionary explanation ; partly be- 
cause artificial selection was a familiar idea of 
proved value in selective breeding, and “natural 
selection”? seemed an exact parallel carried on by 
_ nature in the direction of continual improvement ; 
but perhaps more largely because the abstract idea 
of “natural selection” involved so many intricate 
separate concepts that for nearly a generation 
scarcely two naturalists in the world could state 
the whole problem of the theory exactly alike;—on 
all these accounts the theory of natural selection, 
or of the “survival of the fittest,” to use the phrase 
of Herbert Spencer, became in the latter decades of 
the nineteenth century well-nigh universal. 

But about 1887 a faction or school arose who 
criticized the main idea of Darwin and Wallace and 
fell back on the Lamarckian factor of the trans- 
mission of acquired characters as really the essential 


80 Q. E. D. 


cause of the process of evolution. Herbert Spencer, 
E. D. Cope and others did much to criticize natural 
selection as inadequate to do what was attributed 
to it, dwelling on the importance of the trans- 
mission of acquired characters. Spencer even went 
so far as to declare, “either there has been in- 
heritance of acquired characters, or there has been 
no evolution.” These Neo-Lamarckians argued 
that natural selection alone can neither explain the 
origin of varieties, nor the first steps in the slow 
advance toward “usefulness.” An organ must be 
already useful before natural selection can take 
hold of it to improve it. Selection cannot make a 
thing useful to start with, but only (possibly) make 
more useful what already exists. Until the newly 
formed buds of developing limbs or organs became 
decidedly “ useful” to the individual or the species, 
would they not be in the way, merely so many 
hindrances, to be removed by natural selection in- 
stead of being preserved and improved? But, in 
this view of the matter, they argued, what single 
organ of any species would there be that must not 
thus have appeared long before it was wanted ? 

Or to use the pungent words quoted with ap- 
proval by Hugo de Vries at the end of his “ Species 
and Varieties” (pp. 825, 826), ‘“ Natural selection 
may explain the survival of the fittest, but it can- 
not explain the arrival of the fittest.” 

This side of the argument is dwelt upon at some 
length by Alex. Graham Bell, as reported in a 
recent interview. He says: 


THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 81 


“Natural selection does not and cannot produce 
new species or varieties or cause modifications of 
living organisms to come into existence. On the 
contrary, its sole function is to prevent evolution. 
In its action it is destructive merely,—not con- 
structive,—causing death and extinction, not life 
and progression. Death cannot produce life; and 
though natural selection may produce the death of 
the unfit, it cannot produce the fit, far less evolve 
the fittest. It may permit the fit to survive by not 
killing them off, if they are already in existence; 
but it does not bring them into being, or produce 
improvement in them after they have once ap- 
peared.” * 

Opposing these Neo-Lamarckians were such 
prominent scientists as August Weismann, A. R. 
Wallace, E. Ray Lankester, who strenuously op- 
posed the idea that “acquired characters,” or more 
precisely parental experience, are ever transmissi- 
ble. In the subsequent years the greatest variety 
of experimental tests have been applied to secure 
the hereditary transmission of any sort of such ac- 
quired characters, with uniformly negative results. 
One of the most elaborate of these experiments was 
conducted by a German botanist, who transplanted 
2,500 different kinds of mountain plants to the low- 
lands, where he studied them for several years 
alongside their relatives, natives of these lowlands, 
He found that their mountain environment had 
‘made absolutely no permanent change in their 
*World’s Work, December, 1913, p, 177, 


82 O. (ED. 


structures or habits, which soon conformed exactly 
with those of their relatives which had lived in the 
lowland environment for centuries. Many similar 
efforts have been made to confirm this doctrine of 
the transmission of acquired characters; but their 
universal failure is like that of mechanics in trying 
to invent perpetual motion. 

Thomas Hunt Morgan sums up the present situa- 
tion in the following words: “To-day the theory 
has few followers among trained investigators, but 
it still has a popular vogue that is wide-spread and 
vociferous.”* And we may add that the extent of 
its spread is directly proportioned to the need felt 
for this doctrine as a support of the theory of evo- 
lution, while the vociferance of its advocates is in- 
versely proportioned to the evidence in its support. 
- Asaresult of extensive modern experiments and 
discussion, biologists have grown very cautious, and 
are by no means so positive as they were twenty 
years ago in affirming just ow species have come 
into existence. Echoes of this old controversy be- 
tween the two leading schools of biologists are oc- 
casionally heard; but the enthusiasm with which 
they set out a half century ago to solve the riddle 
of plant and animal life has largely given way to a 
purpose to discard speculation and patiently to ob- 
serve and record actual facts. For with natural 
selection discredited in the house of its friends, and 
Lamarckianism under grave suspicion from want of 
a single well authenticated example, it is hard to 

1“¢ A Critique of the Theory of Evolution,’’ p. 32. 


THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 83 


see what there is left of the biological doctrine that 
has so dominated scientific thought for a half cen- 
tury. If each of these opposed schools of scientists 
are right in what they deny, the whole theoretical 
foundation for the origin of new kinds of animals 
and plants is swept away,—absolutely gone. For 
if an individual really cannot transmit what he has 
acquired in his lifetime, how can he transmit what 
he has not got himself, and what none of his ances- 
tors ever had? And if natural selection cannot 
start a single organ of a single type, what is the use 
of discussing its supposed ability to improve them 
after the machinery is all built ? 


ii 


Such was the general condition of theoretical 
biology about the beginning of the present century. 
In the meantime those who were dealing with the 
empyrical or experimental side of these problems 
were seeking for the causes of and the rules for 
variation. All living things vary from one genera- 
tion to another; the question was, Why do they 
vary ? and do these variations really represent new 
characters comparable to new species in the mak- 
ing ? or are they, so to speak, but an elastic reaction 
of the internal vital elasticity of the organism, all 
the while latent and only seeking a favorable ex- 
pression, to return again under other conditions to 
the former type? | 

The effort to reduce these variations to law and 
system was pursued by thousands of investigators, 


84 OE, iD: 


with varying but at all times perplexing and disap- 
pointing results. But in the year 1900 the scien- 
tific world awoke to the surprising fact that a pa- 
tient obscure investigator had already solved most 
of the puzzles of variation and heredity some thirty- 
five years before. Gregor Mendel, born a peasant 
boy, trained as a monk, and afterwards appointed 
Abbot of Briinn, had in the year 1865 published the 
results of his experiments in breeding, which had 
been ignored or forgotten until rediscovered in 1900 
by de Vries and two others simultaneously. From 
this point Mendelism, as it is now called, has stead- 
ily gained ground, until at the present time it can 
be said to be the dominating conception among 
biologists the world over regarding the problems of 
heredity. 

Mendel worked chiefly with peas, crossing differ- 
ent varieties. In his methods of investigation he 
differed from all previous investigators in concen- 
trating his attention upon a single pair of alterna- 
tive or contrasted characters at a time, and observ- 
ing how these alternative characters are trans- 
mitted. 

Thus when he crossed a tall with a dwarf, giving 
attention to this pair of contrasted characters alone, 
he found that all the first hybrid generation were 
talls, with no dwarfs and no intermediates. Ac- 
cordingly he called the tall character dominant, and 
the dwarf character recesswe, and a pair of con- 
trasted characters which act in this way are now > 
called ,factors or sometimes called wnet characters. 


THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 85 


But on allowing these hybrids to cross-fertilize one 
another in the usual way, Mendel found that in the 
second generation of hybrids there were always 
three talls to one dwarf out of every four. Further 
experiments proved that these dwarfs of the second 
hybrid generation always bred true, that is, one out 
of four; and that one out of the remaining talls 
always bred true, making another quarter of the 
total; while the remaining fifty per cent. proved to 
be mixed talls, always acting as did the original 
hybrids, splitting up in the next generation in the 
same arithmetical proportion as before. 

Accordingly, if we confine our study to the two 
contrasted characters, tallness and dwarfness, we 
see that just three kinds of peas exist, namely, 
dwarfs which breed true, talls which breed true, 
and talls which always give the same definite pro- 
portion of talls and dwarfs among their descend- 
ants. Innumerable experiments which have since 
been made with other pairs of characters have 
demonstrated that this same mathematical propor- 
tion holds good throughout the whole world of 
plants and animals;' and hence this astonishing 
result is now called Mendel’s Law, and is regarded 
as the most important discovery in biology in.sey- 
eral generations. 


7 When dealing with only a few individual cases, we do not 
always find them to come out in such exact proportion ; but 
when the number of examples is large, the proportion is so close 
to these figures that the exceptions can be entirely neglected ag 
probably due to error of some kind, 


86 Q. ED. 


There are two distinct kinds of Andalusian fowls, 
one pure bred black, the other pure bred white 
with slight dashes of black here and there. When 
these are mated, no matter which color is the father 
or the mother, the next or hybrid generation are 
always a queer mixture of black and white called 
by fanciers blue. When these blues are interbred, 
one-quarter of their offspring will be white, which 
will prove to breed true ever afterwards, one- 
quarter will be black that will breed true, and fifty 
per cent. will be blue which will break up in the 
next generation in the very same way as before. 
In this case neither white nor black character is 
dominant, and accordingly we have a blending of 
both in the first hybrid generation. 

In guinea pigs, black color has been found to be 
dominant over white, rough coat over smooth coat, 
and short hair over long hair. These remarkable 
results following from an experimental trial of 
Mendelism have stimulated hosts of investigators 
in all parts of the world, until now many varieties 
of plants and animals have been studied for many 
successive generations, already building up a con- 
siderable literature dealing with the subject. 

Perhaps the most extensive and exact series of 
experiments along this line have been carried on 
by Thomas Hunt Morgan and his assistants, of 
Columbia University. For over five years they 
have been breeding the wild fruit fly (Drosophila 
ampelophila), during which time they have origi- 
nated and observed over a hundred and twenty-five 


THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 87 


new types that breed true according to Mendel’s 
laws. Every part of the body has been affected 
by one or another of these mutations. ‘The wings 
have been shortened, or changed in shape, or made 
to disappear entirely. The eyes have been changed 
in color or entirely eliminated. And each of these 
wonderful variations was brought about not grad- 
ually, but at a single step, 

Professor Morgan grows justifiably sarcastic in 
contrasting these demonstrated laboratory facts 
with the armchair theories that have so long and 
so harmfully dominated biological studies. A quo- 
tation from him will not be out of place at this 
point. : 

“T may recall in this connection that wingless 
flies also arose in our cultures by a single mutation. 
We used to be told that wingless insects occurred 
on desert islands because those insects that had the 
best developed wings had been blown out to sea. 
Whether this is true or not, I will not pretend to 
say; but at any rate wingless insects may also 
arise, not through a slow process of elimination, 
but at a single step. . . . Formerly we were 
taught that eyeless animals arose in caves. This 
case shows that they may also arise suddenly in 
glass milk bottles, by a change in a single factor.” ’ 

We need not be particularly concerned here with 
the theoretical explanations of these facts offered 
in terms of the microscopic or even the infra-micro- 
scopic components of the germ cells. Morgan 

1“ A Critique of the Theory of Evolution,’’ p. 67. 


88 0, aD. 


seems to make out a strong case for the theory that 
the chromosomes found in the nucleus are the real 
ultimate units that carry the hereditary factors. 
But he is quite decided in the opinion that these 
hereditary factors are fixed, and are not changed 
from generation to generation either by environ- 
ment or by selection.’ The important thing for us 
in this connection is to get a clear idea of the results 
following from an application of Mendel’s laws to 
the old, old problem of the origin of species, inci- 
dentally noticing how the theory associated with 
Darwin’s name now looks in the light of these new 
facts. 
We have hitherto been considering the results 
worked out by Mendel with but one pair of con- 
trasted characters or factors. But Mendel studied 
the relation of other characters of the pea, and 
found among other results that smooth seeds are 
dominant to wrinkled seeds, colored seeds dominant 
to white, yellow color dominant to green, etc. But 
when a combination of ¢wo factors in each parent 
are put into contrast by cross breeding, two wholly 
original forms (as they seemed) were sometimes 
produced, and it looked as if these new kinds were 
really analogous to new species. 

For example, he crossed tall yellow peas with 

1In human beings it has been found that the effects of alco- 
holism and of syphilis are indeed transmitted according to Men, 
delian law, being the two solitary examples of diseased conditions 
that are thus transmitted. But they are so plainly pathologic 


phenomena that there is little temptation for the advocates of 
Lamarckianism to use them as proofs of their theory. 


THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 89 


dwarf green peas, with the result that the first 
hybrid generation turned out to be all tall yellows. 
However, in the second hybrid generation they split 
up according to the law as already stated, modified 
by the additional complication brought into the 
problem by the additional pair of factors. For out 
of every sixteen plants there were nine tall yellows, 
three dwarf yellows, three tall greens, and one dwarf 
green. It is evident that these tall greens and 
dwarf yellows are really new forms; and further 
experiments proved that they can be separated out 
or segregated and grown as pure forms which 
thereafter breed true. Thus we have a very im- 
portant result for the breeder, for it enables him to 
work to a definite aim and combine certain desir- 
able characters into a single form. 

The term mutation, as already intimated, has 
been given to this process of producing new varie- 
ties in this way. The kinds so produced are termed 
mutants, and at first they were hailed by enthusi- 
astic scientists as “ elementary species.” De Vries 
in particular gave much publicity to this idea; for 
he thought he had really produced a new kind 
comparable in every respect to a true species as 
produced by nature among wild plants. But the 
enthusiasm with which this applied result of Men- 
del’s Law was at first hailed by biologists has 
gradually subsided; for it has been found that 
though these new forms will breed true under cer- 
tain conditions, they are nevertheless cross-fertile 
with the original forms, and thus the circle can be 


90 | O.. Ee. 


completed back again by a return to the parent 
form, from which the new “species” can again be 
produced at will with the same mathematical ex- 
actness as before. 


ITI 


Where then are we ? 

Clearly we have not really produced any new 
species in any correct sense of the word. If we 
have produced new forms that breed true and that 
are seemingly just as deserving of the rank of dis- 
tinct species as many now listed in scientific books, 
it only shows that our lists are sadly at fault, 
and that they are not all species that are called 
species. These experiments merely indicate that 
the parent form possesses more potential characters 
than ut can give expression to in a sengle individual 
form, some of them being necessarily latent or 
hidden, and that when these latent ones show them- 
selves they must do so at the expense of others 
which become latent or hidden in their turn. This 
vital elasticity, as it may be termed, or the vital 
rebound under definite conditions, is indeed a prime 
characteristic of the species just as it is of the indi- 
vidual; but like that of the individual the vital 
elasticity of the species is strictly bounded by com- 
paratively narrow: limits beyond which we have 
never seen a single type pass under either natural 
or artificial conditions. Mutations can be made ac- 
cording to Mendel’s Law ; but when we have made 
them once we can always be sure of producing the 


THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 91 


very same mutanis again in the very same way, as 
surely as we produce a definite chemical compound ; 
and when we have made it we can always resolve 
tt at will back into its original form, just as we can 
a chemical compound. And so, where is the evo- 
lution? or how do these facts throw any light on 
the problem of the origin of species, any more than 
chemical compounds throw light on the origin of the 
elements? Obviously in biology as in chemistry we 
are only working in a circle, merely marking time. 

And the bearing of these facts on the other 
problem of the transmission of acquired characters 
is quite obvious. Mendelism provides no place for 
any such transmission. Mendel’s Law is sometimes 
called the law of alternative mnheritance, thus em- 
bodying in its name the thought that offspring may 
show the characters possessed by one parent or by 
the other, but that it cannot develop any characters 
whatever which were not manifest or latent in the 
ancestry. Changes in the environment during the 
embryonic stage, it is true, seem sometimes to be 
registered in the growing form; but it has never 
yet been proved that these induced changes can ever 
amount to a unit character or genetic factor that 
will maintain itself and segregate as a distinct 
factor after hybridization. Ancestry alone fur- 
nishes the material for the factor, and no amount 
of induced change can get itself registered in the 
organism so as to come into this charmed circle of 
ancestral characters which alone seem to be passed 
on to posterity. 


92 Q. E D. 


A quotation from Bateson ought to set this point 
at rest : 

“The essence of the Mendelian principle is very 
easily expressed. It is, first, that in great measure 
the properties of organisms are due to the presence 
of distinct, detachable elements [factors], separately 
transmitted in heredity; and secondly, that the 
perent cannot puss on to offspring an element, and 
consequently the corresponding property, which it 
does not itself possess.” ? 

Heredity we now see is a method of analysis, and 
the facts brought to light by Mendelism help us 
very much toward an understanding of living mat- 
ter. Especially does it help us to understand the 
complexity underlying the facts of heredity, which 
until now have seemed so strange and capricious. 
As Professor Punnett of Cambridge remarks: 

“Constitutional differences of a radical nature 
may be concealed beneath an apparent identity of 
external form. Purple sweet peas from the same 
pod, indistinguishable in appearance and of identical 
ancestry, may yet be fundamentally different in 
their constitution. From one may come purples, 
reds, and whites; from another only purples and 
reds ; from another purples and whites alone ; whilst 
a fourth will breed true to purple. Any method 
of investigation which fails to take account of the 
radical differences of constitution which may under- 
lie external similarity, must necessarily be doomed 
to failure. Conversely, we realize to-day that indi- 

1 Scientific American Sup., January 3, 1914, 


THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 93 


viduals identical in constitution may yet have an 
entirely different ancestral history. rom the cross 
between two fowls with rose and pea combs, each 
of irreproachable pedigree for generations, come 
single combs in the second generation, and these 
singles are precisely similar in ther behavior to 
singles bred from strains of unblemished ancestry. 
In the ancestry of the one is to be found no single 
over a long series of years; in the ancestry of the 
other nothing but singles occurred. The creature 
of given constitution may often be built up In many 
ways, but once formed it will behave like others of 
the same constitution.” ’ 


IV 


Vanished at last are the old theories of gradual 
changes in species perpetuated and accumulated by 
natural selection until at last wholly new forms 
have in this way been produced. ‘True variations 
are now seen to be confined within well-marked 
and rather narrow limits, within which ordinary 
variations may occur, perhaps induced by environ- 
ment. These fluctuating variations grade off into 
one another on all sides, and their differences can 
be plotted on a frequency curve; but the very im- 
portant thing for us to remember is that these 
fluctuating variations cannot be transmitted. Be- 
yond these fluctuating variations come the unit 
characters or factors, which are distinct from each 
other, or “ discontinuous,” to use the technical term, 

1 Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol, XVIII, p. 119. 


94. O.. E 2D. 


and which therefore cannot be plotted on a frequency 
curve. These factors are not modified in the least 
by the environment, and their peculiarities are 
faithfully transmitted in heredity with all the 
precision of chemical law. But even these factors 
are all within the bounds of the species. There is 
not a shred of scientific evidence that either natural 
or artificial devices have originated a single genetic 
factor that was net all the time potentially latent 
in the ancestry, capable of being produced at will 
by the proper combination. 

It is a universal law of living things that all 
forms left to themselves tend to degenerate. The 
necessity for continuous artificial selection in the 
sugar beet, in Sea Island cotton, in corn, in Jersey 
and Holstein cattle, in trotting horses, proves this 
universal tendency to degenerate.’ Natural selec- 
tion in a somewhat similar way tends to postpone 
this degeneracy by killing off the “ unfit,” but 
selection either artificial or natural cannot origi- 
nate anything new, and its results are here dis- 
played merely among the small fluctuating varia- 
tions mentioned above. Even among the real 
genetic factors it may show itself by allowing some 


*The following represents the consensus of scientific opinion 
regarding the lessons to be drawn from the phenomena of our 
improved races of domesticated plants and animals : 

‘‘One need not be a pessimist to assert the actual evidence thus 
far obtained indicates that the supposed progress made in the 
improvement of domesticated animals and plants is nothing more 
than the sorting out of pure lines, and thus represents no ad- 
vancement.’’—Prof. L. B. Walton, Science, April 3, 1914. 


THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 95 


to survive alone; but as no combination of diverse 
factors can originate anything really new, its field 
for operation among these factors is extremely 
limited. Among species also it is operative, killing 
off some and allowing others to survive. But 
neither among fluctuations, among factors, nor yet 
among species can selection originate anything 
new. 

Nor is there any other method known to modern 
science by means of which new factors can be 
originated which were not potentially latent in the 
ancestry. The much heralded new “species” of 
de Vries and others are now known to be merely 
new factors cropping out ;’ for though they remain 
constant and breed true, they obey Mendel’s Law 
when crossed with their parental forms, and hence 
are merely the result of some new combination of 
factors which can be reproduced at will by using 
the same method of combination and segregation. 
The real scientific test for any form supposed to be 

1 Some of our leading biologists are now disposed to grow some- 
what humorous when speaking of this mutation theory of de 
Vries, as may be illustrated by the following: 

‘The mutation theory of de Vries appears accordingly to lag 
useless on the biological stage, and may apparently be now 
relegated to the limbo of discarded hypotheses. . . . The 
present refutation has been undertaken in the interest of biolog- 
ical progress in this country. It is now high time, so far as the 
so-called mutation hypothesis, based on the conduct of the even- 
ing primrose in cultures, is concerned, that the younger genera- 
tion of biologists should take heed lest the primrose path of 
dalliance lead them imperceptibly into the primrose path to the 


everlasting bonfire.’”’—Prof. Edw. C. Jeffrey (Harvard), in 
Science, April 3, 1914. 


96 Q. E. D. 


a new “species” would be twofold: (1) to show 
that some new character had been added which no 
ancestor ever possessed; and (2) to show that this 
new character will breed true under all circum- 
stances of hybridization and not merely segregate 
as a unit character or mere analytic variety after 
hybridization. It is almost superfluous to say that 
no “new species ” originating in modern times has 
ever justified itself under these tests. 

In conclusion it may be remarked that biologists 
do not claim to have solved all the problems con- 
nected with heredity and variation. But the gen- 
eral results taught us by Mendelism are now es- 
tablished beyond controversy. Led by the German 
biologists, the leading scientists of the world had 
already acknowledged that “pure”? Darwinism or 
natural selection cannot explain the origin of new 
organs or new forms. And now Mendelism des- 
troys the other supposed foundation for biological 
evolution, by showing that small variations cannot 
be accumulated into large differences equal in value 
to a unit character or a new species. Thus the 
whole foundation of biological evolution has been 
completely undermined by these new discoveries ; 
and were it not for the wide-spread credence the 
evolutionary theory has already received, and the 
intellectual momentum it has acquired tending to 
carry it on by its inertia into the future, it could 
be only a very short time now before the elaborate 
treatises attempting to orientate with it all the facts 
of religion and history would have to be consigned 


THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 97 


to the shelves labeled, ‘“‘ Of Historic Interest.” For 
as Bateson remarked in his recent address as Presi- 
dent before the British Association at Melbourne, 
Australia, the new knowledge of heredity shows 
that whatever evolution there is occurs by loss of 
factors and not by gain, and that in this way the 
progress of science is “destroying much that till 
lately passed for gospel.” * 


Vv 


Let us sum up the situation. We began this 
chapter with the question, Have new kinds of 
plants and animals originated in modern times 
comparable in all essential respects with the idea 
of true species ? | 

The answer of modern science is reluctantly 
obtained, but it isa negative. De Vries and others 
have indeed originated new kinds that were loudly 
hailed as new species, and are doubtless as deserv- 
ing of specific rank as many already listed for years 
in the treatises of specialists. Indeed there is every 
reason to believe that almost countless numbers of 
our taxonomic species have originated from com- 
mon ancestral originals. But as these so-called 
species are now known to be freely or moderately 
cross fertile with other related species, their hybrids 
following the ordinary laws of Mendelian inherit- 


1In commenting on these views of Bateson, Prof. S. C. Holmes, 
of the University of California, well speaks of them as ‘‘an 
illustration of the bankruptcy of present evolutionary theory,’’— 
Science, September 3, 1915. 


9 8 Q. E. D. 


ance, we see that they are not true species but 
mere analytic varieties. 

In short, we now know that our taxonomic 
classifications have been marked off on altogether 
too narrow lines. This has tended greatly to con- 
fuse the question at issue. But from our enlarged 
views of the laws and nature of heredity and 
variation, as well as from the original intent of the 
term species as defined by the great scientist who 
originated it, the verdict of an impartial investigator 
must be that we have never seen a new species 
originate by any natural or artificial method since 
the dawn of scientific observation. ae 

Here again we find the record of Creation con- 
firmed; for the failure of the thousands of modern 
investigators to originate genuine new species 
proves that in this respect also Creation is not now 
going on. And all the analogies from the origin of 
matter, of energy, of life, and from the laws of the 
reproduction of cells, indicate that we have at last 
found rock bottom truth regarding the vexed ques- 
tion of the origin of species. So far as science can 
observe and record, each living thing on earth, in 
air, in water, reproduces “ after its kind.” 


Vil 
GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 


I 


N all the previous chapters I have not been 
| giving any very new facts or any discoveries 

of my own. True, my conclusions from the 
facts may seem novel; but in general I have been 
giving merely facts which are almost universally 
acknowledged by educated men. ‘The conservation 
laws of matter and of energy, the impassable gulf 
between the living and the not-living, the laws 
governing ceil multiplication, are matters of com- 
mon knowledge and will be found in the appropriate 
college text-books throughout the civilized world. 
Even the facts which I have presented regarding 
variation and heredity are admitted in one way or 
another by practically all biologists. But im follow- 
ing our general subject into the field of geology, I 
shall be obliged to present some comprehensive 
truths and general conclusions which are not 
so widely acknowledged, because only recently 
brought to light. However, as these facts and 
conclusions may seem very new and strange to 
many, I shall endeavor to build up my argument 
wholly on the recorded observations of the very 
highest authorities rather than on my own unsup- 
ported testimony; though for the sake of brevity I 

99 


100 QO. E. (1D. 


shall be obliged to refer the reader to my “ Fun- 
damentals of Geology” (1913) for some of the de- 
tails. 

One of the great outstanding ideas of geology as 
usually taught is that life has been on the globe 
for many millions of years, that in fact there has 
been a graded succession of different types of life 
in a well defined invariable order, from the lower 
and more generalized to the higher and more 
specialized. Quite obviously this succession of life 
was antagonistic to the former views of a literal 
Creation; and only on this supposed fact as an out- 
line has the modern theory of biological evolution 
been built up. For if geology cannot furnish the 
most unquestionable proof that life has occurred in 
a very definite and invariable order, what is the 
use of talking about the development of one form 
of life into another by a gradual process of evolu- 
tion ? ! 

One of the highest scientific authorities in 
America, Prof. Thomas Hunt Morgan, of Columbia 
University, has recently said, “The direct evidence 
furnished by fossil remains is by all odds the 
strongest evidence that we have in favor of organic 
evolution.”’ Accordingly we purpose to examine 
carefully what this by all odds “ strongest evidence” 
is like. 

II 

As with some of the other facts with which we 

have had to deal in previous chapters, a correct 
1‘ A Critique of the Theory of Evolution,’’ p, 24, 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 101 


understanding of the questions involved can best be 
obtained by examining the history of the develop- 
ment of the science. 

The first man with whom we need to concern 
ourselves is A. G. Werner, a teacher of mineralogy 
in the University of Freiberg, Germany. For 
three hundred years his ancestors had been con- 
nected with mining work, and he, though possessing 
little general education, knew about all that was 
then known regarding mineralogy and petrology. 
He wrote no books; but by his enthusiastic teach- 
ing he gathered as students and sent out as evan- 
gelists hundreds of devoted young scientists who 
rapidly spread his theories through all the countries 
of Europe. 

“Unfortunately,” says Zittel, “ Werner’s field 
observations were limited to a small district, the 
Erz Mountains and the neighboring parts of Saxony 
and Bohemia. And his chronological scheme of 
formations was founded on the mode of occurrence 
of the rocks within these narrow confines.” * 

Werner had found the granites, limestones, sand- 
stones, schists, etc., occurring in a certain relative 
order in his native country ; and he drew the very 
remarkable conclusion that this was the normal 
order in which these various rocks would invaria- 
bly be found in all parts of the world, on the theory 
that this was the order in which these different 
rocks had been formed in the beginning, great, 
layers of these different rocks having originally 

1 “* History of Geology,’’ p. 59, 


102 OE ID. 


been spread completely around the globe one out- 
side another like the coats of an onion. With this 
as a major premise, it is not surprising that he and 
his enthusiastic disciples “‘ were as certain of the 
origin and sequence of the rocks as if they had 
been present at the formation of the earth’s crust.” * 

The amusement with which this onion-coat theory 
is now regarded is hardly appropriate in view of 
its universal vogue among geologists about the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, and in view 
of the further fact that a very similar and only 
slightly modified substitute theory has been uni- 
versally taught for three-quarters of a century and 
still prevails. The modern form of the theory 
substitutes onion-coats of fossiliferous rocks for 
onion-coats of mineral and lithological characters ; 
and a brief consideration of this theory is now in 
order. 

About the time that various geologists here and 
there were finding rocks in positions that, could not 
be explained in terms of Werner’s theory, William 
Smith (1769-1839) in England and the great Baron 
Ouvier (1769-1832) in France found characteristic 
fossils occurring in various strata ; and under their 
teachings it was not long before the fossils were 
considered the best guide in determining the rel- 
ative sequence of the rocks. The familiar idea 
of world-enveloping strata as representing suc- 
cessive ages was not discarded; but instead of 
Werner’s successive ages of limestone making, 

1A, Geikie, ‘‘ Founders of Geology,’’ p. 112, 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 103 


sandstone making, etc., these new investigators 
taught that there were successive ages of inverte- 
brates, fishes, reptiles, and mammals, these crea- 
tures having registered their existence in rocky 
strata which thus by hypothesis completely encir- 
cled the globe one outside another. 

It is true that early. in the nineteenth century 
Sir Charles Lyell and others tried to disclaim this 
absurd and unscientific inheritance from Werner’s 
onion-coats; but modern geology has never yet 
got rid of its essential and its chief characteristic 
idea, for all our text-books still speak of various 
successive ages when only certain types of life 
prevailed all over the globe. Hence it is that Her- 
bert Spencer caustically remarks: “Though the 
onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is traceable, 
under a transcendental form, even in the conclusions 
of its antagonists.”* Hence it is that Wheweu, 
in his “ History of the Inductive Sciences,” refuses 
to acknowledge that in geology any real advance 
has yet been made toward a stable science like 
those of astronomy, physics, and chemistry. “We 
hardly know,” he says, “whether the progress is 
begun. The history of physical astronomy almost 
commences with Newton, and few persons will 
venture to assert that the Newton of geology has 
yet appeared.”? Hence it is that T. H. Huxley 
declares, “In the present condition of our knowl 
edge and of owr methods, one verdict,—‘ not proven 
and not provable’—must be recorded against all 

1“*Tilustr. of Univ. Prog.,’’ p. 343. 2 Vol. II, p. 580. 


‘104. NO. ES SD, 


grand hypotheses of the paleontologist respecting 
the general succession of life on the globe.” ’ 
And hence it is that Sir Henry H. Howorth, a 
member of the British House of Commons and the 
‘author of three exhaustive works on the Glacial 
theory, declares, “It is a singular and notable fact, 
that while most other branches of science have 
emancipated themselves from the trammels of meta- 
physical reasoning, the scvence of geology still re- 
mains emprisoned in a priore theories.” ? 

And thus the matter remains even to-day, in this 
second decade of the twentieth century. Geology 
has never yet been regenerated, as have all the other 
sciences, by being delivered from the caprice of 
subjective speculations and @ priori theories and 
being placed on the secure basis of objective and 
demonstrable fact, in accordance with the princi- 
ples of that inductive method of investigation 
which was instituted by Bacon and which has be- 
come so far universal in the other sciences that it 
is everywhere known as the scientific method. In 
accordance with this method, theories in all the 
other sciences are always kept well subordinated 
to facts ; and whenever unequivocal facts are found 
manifestly contradicting a theory no matter how 
venerable, the theory must go to make way for the 
facts. In other words, the theoretical parts of 
the various other sciences are always kept revised 
from time to time, to keep them in line with the 


1 “ Discourses,’’ pp. 279-288. 
2 “The Glacial Nightmare,’’ Preface, vii. 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 105 


new discoveries that have been made. There has 
been no lack of astonishing discoveries of new 
facts in geology during the past half century or so, 
while all the other sciences have been making such 
astonishing progress. But for over seventy-five . 
years geology has not made a single advance move- 
ment in its theoreticat aspects ; indeed, in all its 
important general principles it has scarcely changed 
in a hundred years. I shall leave it to the reader 
to judge whether this is a case of almost miracu- 
lous perfection from the beginning, or of arrested 
development. 


Til 


Of the three general postulates or @ priore as- 
sumptions of this curiously out-of-date medieval 
science, namely, (1) Uniformity, (2) the Cooling- 
globe theory, and (3) the theory of the Successive 
Ages, the first two have already been examined 
and found wanting by other investigators, and 
have been allowed to lapse into a sort of honored 
disuse, though their memory is still reverently 
cherished in all the text-books of the science. The 
“Challenger” Expedition dissipated most of the 
myths that had long been taught regarding the 
deep waters of the ocean; and Professor Suess has 
disposed of the closely related myth about the 
coasts of the continents being constantly on the 
seesaw up and down. These two discoveries, with 
others that might be mentioned, dispose of Lyell’s 
theory of uniformity. Lord Kelvin and the other 


106 O. DED. 


physicists dissipated the idea of a molten interior 
of the earth. Hence, because these other false 
hypotheses have already in a measure been disposed 
of, as well as for the sake of brevity, I shall here 
discuss only the third of the prime postulates of 
the current system of geology, namely the theory 
f Successive Ages. And when we have adjusted 
this-aspect of the science of geology to the facts of 
the rocks as made known to us by modern dis- 
coveries, we shall find little in this science out of 
harmony with the older view of a literal Creation 
as taught in the Bible and as already confirmed by 
the other branches of science which we have been 
examining. 

There are jive leading arguments against the 
reality of these successive ages. Four of them 
must be dismissed here by a brief summary of the 
facts as we know them to-day, referring the reader 
to the author’s larger work, where detailed evi- 
dence is given for each. The th series of facts 
I shall give here in more detail, though of course 
even this must be but an outline of what is given 
elsewhere. 

1) In the earlier days of the theory of succes- 
sive ages it was taught that only certain kinds of 
fossils were to be found at the bottom of the series, 
or next to the Primitive or Archzan. This feature 
of the theory was demanded by the supposed uni- 
versal spread of one type of life all around the 
globe in the earliest age. But it is now known 
that the so-called “ oldest” fossiliferous rocks oceur 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 107 


only in detached patches over the globe, while 
other or “ younger ” kinds are just as likely to be 
found on the Primitive or next to the Archean. 
Not only may any kind of fossiliferous rocks occur 
next to the Archean, but even the “ youngest ” 
may be so metamorphosed and crystalline as to re- 
semble exactly in this respect the so-called “ old- 
est” rocks. On the other hand some of the very 
“oldest” rocks may, like the Cambrian strata 
around the Baltic and in some parts of the United 
States, consist of “ muds scarcely indurated and 
sands still incoherent.” * 

All this means that many facts regarding the 
position of the strata as well as regarding their 
consolidation contradict the theory of successive 
ages. 

2. Many of the rivers of the world completely 
ignore the alleged varying ages of the rocks in the 
different parts of their course, and treat them all 
as if of the same age or as if they began sawing at 
them all at the same time. This is true of the 
Rhine, the Meuse, and the Danube in Europe, the 
Sutlej of India, and the upper part of the Colorado 
in America, not to mention others. The old strand 
lines around all the continents act in the very 
same way, ignoring the varying ages of the rocks 
they happen to meet; as is also true of nearly all 
the great, faults or fissures which are of more than 
local extent. The ore veins of the various minerals 


1J, A. Howe ; Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol, II, p. 86, Cam- 
bridge Edition. 


108 Ol BOD: 


are about as likely to be found in Tertiary or 
Mesozoic as in Paleozoic. A very similar lesson 
is to be learned from the fossils found lying ex- 
posed on the deep ocean bottom; for they are 
about as likely to be Paleozoic or Mesozoic as 
Tertiary. 

From these facts we conclude that practically all 
the great natural chronometers of the earth seem 
to treat the fossiliferous rocks as if they are all of 
about the same age, completely disregarding the 
distinctions in age founded on the fossils. 

38. According to the present chronological ar- 
rangement of the rocks, very many genera, often 
whole tribes of animals, are found as fossils only in 
the oldest rocks, and have skipped all the others, 
though found in comparative abundance in our 
modern world. Very many others have skipped 
from the Mesozoic down, while still others skip 
large parts of the series of successive ages. 

These absurdities would all be avoided by ac- 
knowledging that the current distinctions as to 
the ages of the fossils are purely artificial, and 
that one fossil is intrinsically just as old or as 
young as another. 

4, It is now known that any kind of “ young” 
beds whatsoever, Mesozoic, Tertiary, or even 
Pleistocene, may be found in such perfect con- 
Sormability on some of the very oldest beds over 
wide stretches of country that “the vast interval 
of time intervening is unrepresented either by 
deposition or erosion”; while in some instances 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 109 


these age-separated formations so closely resemble 
one another in structure and in mineralogical 
make-up that, “were it not for fossil evidence, one 
would naturally suppose that a single formation 
was being dealt with” (McConnell); and these 
conditions are “not merely local, but persistent 
over wide areas” (A. Geikie), so that the “ numer- 
ous examples” (Suess) of these conditions “ may 
well be cause for astonishment ” (Suess). 

A still more astonishing thing from the stand- 
point of the current theories is that these conforma- 
ble relations of incongruous strata are often re- 
peated over and over again in the same vertical sec- 
tion, the same kind of bed reappearing alternately 
with others of an entirely different “age,” that is, 
appearing “as if regularly interbedded” (A. Geikie) 
with them, in a manifestly undisturbed series of 
strata. 

Here again we have a very formidable series of 
facts whose gravamen is directed wholly against 
the artificial distinctions in age between the differ- 
ent groups of fossils; and their argument is an elo- 
quent plea that the fossils are neither older nor 
younger but all of a similar age. 

5. Our last fact demands a somewhat more ex- 
tended consideration; but it may be stated in ad- 
vance briefly as follows: 

In very numerous cases and over hundreds and 
even thousands of square miles, the conformable 
conditions specified in the previous fact are exactly 
reproduced upside down ; that is, very “old ” rocks 


110 ©. *E =p; 


occur with just as much appearance of natural con- 
formability on top of very “ young” rocks, the area 
in some instances covering many hundreds of square 
miles, and in one particular instance in Montana 
and Alberta covering about five or six thousand 
square miles of area. 

The first notable example of this phenomenon was 
discovered at Glarus, Switzerland, a good many 
years ago; since which time this locality has be- 
come a Classic in geological literature, and has 
called out many ponderous monographs in German 
and French by such men as Heim, Schardt, Lugeon, 
Rothpletz, and Bertrand. This example, which was 
first (1870) called the Glarner Double Fold by Escher 
and Heim, is now universally called a nearly flat- 
lying “thrust fault,” in accordance with the expla- 
nations since adopted of similar phenomena else- 
where. Without obtruding unnecessary technicali- 
ties upon my non-professional readers, | may quote 
the words of Albert Heim as to the conditions as 
now recognized in these parts: 

“These flat-flying faults, of which those at Glarus 
were the first to be discovered, ave a universal 
phenomenon in the Northern and Central Alps.” ’ 

The favorite method of explaining these condi- 
tions has slightly changed within recent years, as 
already remarked. For whereas the classic exam- 
ple at Glarus was at first spoken of as a double 
fold-in from both sides toward the Sernf Valley, 
this is now universally spoken of as a “ thrust 


1““ Der Bau der Schweizeralpen,’’ p. 17. 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 111 


fault,” with the rocks all pushed one way. Inci- 
dentally it may be noted that this very fact that 
what was long regarded as two completely over- 
turned folds is now spoken of as one flat-lying thrust 
fault, is proma face evidence that there is here no 
physical proof of any real overturning of the strata, 
such as we do find on a very small scale in true 
folded rocks. The latter can usually be measured 
in yards, feet, or inches; while in this example at 
Glarus the area involved would be measured in 
many miles, and in some very similar examples to 
be presently mentioned from America the measure- 
ment could best be made in degrees of latitude and 
longitude or in arcs of the earth’s circumference. 
In these larger examples it is manifestly impossible 
that there should be any physical evidence sufficient 
to Indicate a huge earth movement of this character, 
especially when, as is usually the case, both the up- 
per and the lower strata are quite uninjured in ap- 
pearance. No; the fossils are here in the wrong 
order, that is all. And so, to save the long estab- 
lished doctrines of a very definite order of successive 
life-forms, this theory of a “thrust fault” is offered 
as the best available explanation. As Dr. Albert | 
Heim himself once expressed it very naively ina 
letter to the present writer, that the strata over 
these large areas are in a position manifestly at 
direct disagreement with the received order of the 
fossils, ‘is a fact which can be clearly seen,—only 
we know not yet how to explain it in a mechanical] 
way.” 


112 Q. E. D. 


An example in the Highlands of Scotland was 
about the next to be discovered. Here, as Dana 
says, ‘a mass of the oldest crystalline rocks, many 
miles in length from north to south, was thrust at 
least ten miles westward over younger rocks, part 
of the latter fossiliferous ;” and he further declares, 
“the thrust planes look like planes of bedding, and 
were long so considered.” * 

Sir Archibald Geikie and others had at first de- 
scribed these beds as naturally conformable; and 
when at length they were convinced that the fossils 
would not permit this explanation, Geikie gives us 
some very picturesque details as to how natural they 
look. 

The thrust planes, he says, are with much dif- 
ficulty distinguished “from ordinary stratification 
planes, like which they have been plicated, faulted, 
and denuded. Here and there, as a result of den- 
udation, a portion of one of them appears capping 
a hilltop. One almost refuses to believe that the 
little outlier on the summit does not lie normally 
on the rocks below it, but on a nearly horizontal 
fault by which it has been moved into its place.” 

Of a similar example in Ross Shire he declares : 

“Had these sections been planned for the pur- 
pose of deception, they could not have been more 
skilfully devised, . . . and noone coming first 
to the ground would suspect that what appears to be 
a normal stratigraphical sequence is not really so.” ? 


1‘ Manual,’ pp. 111, 534. 
* Nature, November. 13, 1884, pp. 29-35, 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 113 


Here again we have unequivocal testimony from 
the most competent of observers that there is no 
physical evidence whatever to lead any one to say 
that a ponderous scale of the earth’s crust was 
really pushed up on top of other portions, as this 
makeshift theory of “thrust faults” involves. The 
Jossils are here in the wrong order, just as in the 
case at Glarus; that is all. The facts seem to be a 
flat contradiction to the theory of definite successive 
ages, and to save the theory this explanation of a 
“thrust fault” is invented, though there is abso- 
lutely no physical evidence of any disturbance of 
the strata. 

Our next stopping place is in the Southern Ap- 
palachian Mountains of eastern Tennessee and north- 
ern Georgia. Here we have the Carboniferous 
strata dipping gently to the southeast, like an ordi- 
nary low monocline, under Cambrian or Lower 
Silurian, one of these so-called faults having a 
reported length of 375 miles,’ while in another 
instance the upper strata are said to have been 
pushed about eleven miles in the direction of the 
“thrust.” ? These conditions, we are told, “have 
provoked the wonder of the most experienced geol- 
ogists,” * because of the perfectly natural appear- 
ance of the surfaces of the strata affected ; or as 
this same writer puts it, “The mechanical effort is 
great beyond comprehension, but the effect upon 

* Bailey Willis, Geol. Survey, Report, Vol. 13, p. 228, 


*C. W. Hayes, Bull. Geol, Soc., Vol. 2, pp. 141-154, 
* Willis, op. cit., p. 228, 


114 Oo BvD, 


the rocks is inappreciable,” and “the fault dip is 
often parallel to the bedding of the one or the 
other series of strata.”’ Which means, in other 
words, that these “thrust planes” look just like 
ordinary planes of bedding between conformable 
strata. - 

The Rocky Mountains furnish examples of many 
kinds of natural phenomena on the very largest 
scale, and those of the sort here under consideration 
are no exception to this rule. For here we have 
an immense area east of the main divide, extending 
from the middle of Montana upto the Yellowhead 
Pass in Alberta, or over 350 miles long, where the 
tops of the mountains consist of jointed limestones 
or argillites of. Algonkian or pre-Cambrian “ age,” 
resting on soft Cretaceous shales. Often the greater 
part of the mass of a range will consist of these 
“older” and harder rocks, which by the erosion of 
the soft underlying shales are left standing in pic- 
turesque, rectangular, cathedral-like masses, easily 
recognizable as far off as they can be seen. And 
the almost entire absence of trees or other vegeta- 
‘tion helps one to trace out the relationship of these 
formations over immense areas with little or no 
’ difficulty. 

In the latitude of the Bow River, near the Cana- 
dian Pacific main line, there is a long narrow valley 
of these Cretaceous beds some sixty-five miles long, 
called the Cascade Trough, with of course pre- 
Cambrian mountains on each side. Somewhat fur- 

1 Willis, op. cit., p. 227. 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 115 


ther south there are two of these Cretaceous valleys 
parallel to one another, and in some places three ; 
while just south of the fiftieth parallel of latitude, 
at Gould’s Dome, there are actually jie parallel 
ranges of these Palzozoic mountains, with four 
Cretaceous valleys im between, one of these valleys, 
the Crow’s Nest Trough, being ninety-five miles 
long. 

But we ought to take a nearer view of these 
wonderful conditions. A convenient point of ap- 
proach will be just east of Banff, Alberta, near 
Kananaskis Station, where the Fairholme Mountain 
has been described by R. G. McConnell of the Cana- 
dian Survey. The latter remarks with amazement 
on the perfectly natural appearance of these Algon- 
kian limestones resting in seeming conformability 
on Cretaceous shales, and says that the line of 
separation between them, called in the theory the 
“thrust plane,” resembles in all respects an ordi- 
nary stratification plane. I quote his language: 

“The angle of inclination of its plane to the 
horizon is very low, and in consequence of this its 
outcrop follows a very sinuous line along the base 
of the mountains, and acts exactly like the line of 
contact of two nearly horizontal formations. 

“The best places for examining this fault are at 
the gaps of the Bow and of the south fork of Ghost 
River. . . . The fault plane here is nearly 
horizontal, and the two formations, viewed from the 
valley, appear to succeed one another conformably.” * 

1 Annual Report, 1886, Part D, pp. 33, 34. . 


116 O. ND. 


This author adds the further interesting detail 
that the underlying Cretaceous shales are “very 
soft,” and ‘‘have suffered very little by the sliding 
of the limestone over them.” ? 

About a hundred miles further south, but still 
in Alberta, we have the well-known Crow’s Nest 
Mountain, a lone peak, which consists of these same 
Algonkian limestones resting on a Cretaceous valley 
“in a nearly horizontal attitude,” as G. M. Dawson 
says, which “in its structure and general appear- 
ance much resembles Chief Mountain,” ? another 
detached peak some fifty miles further south, just 
across the boundary line in Montana. 

Chief Mountain has been well described by Bailey 
Willis, who estimates that the Cretaceous beds un- 
derneath this mountain must be 8,500 feet thick ; 
while the so-called “ thrust plane ” “is essentially 
parallel to the bedding” of the upper series. 

“This apparently is true not only of the seg- 
ments of thrust surface beneath eastern Flattop, 
Yellow, and Chief Mountain, but also of the more 
deeply buried portions which appear to dip with 
the Algonkian strata into the syncline. While ob- 
servation is not complete, it may be assumed on a 
basis of fact that thrust surfaces and bedding are 
nearly parallel over extensive areas.” ° 

‘ Quite recently this region has been studied by 
Marius R. Campbell of the Washington Survey 
1 Report, 1886, Part D, p. 84. ? Report, 1885, Part B, p. 67. 


8 Bull. Geol. Soc., Vol. 13, pp. 305-352, 
4 Id., p. 336. 5 Id., p. 336. 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 117 


Staff (Bulletin 600), while the part in Alberta has 
been studied by Rollin T. Chamberlin of Chicago. 
Much of the vast area involved is not yet well ex- 
plored; but over it all, so far as it has been fully 
examined, the same lithological and stratigraphical 
structures reappear with the persistence of a repeat- 
ing decimal. And were it not for the exigencies 
of the theory of Successive Ages, this whole region 
of some five or six thousand square miles would be 
considered as only an ordinary example, on a rather 
large scale, of undisturbed horizontal stratification 
cut up by erosion into mountains of denudation, 
with of course occasional instances of minor local 
disturbances here and there, as would be expected 
over an area of this extent. 

Richards and Mansfield in a recent paper de- 
scribe the “ Bannock Overthrust,” some 270 miles 
long, in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. The Car- 
negie Research recently reported a similar phe- 
nomenon about 500 miles long in northern China. 

But it would be tiresome to follow these condi- 
tions around the world. We have plenty of 
examples, and we have them described by the 
foremost of living geologists. What we need to 
do now is to adopt a true scientific attitude of 
mind, a mind freed from the hypnotizing influence 
of the current theories, in order correctly to inter- 
pret the facts as we already have them. 

How much of the earth’s crust would we have to 
jind in this upside down order of the fossils, before 
we would be convinced that there must be some- 


118 O.. iad. 


thing hopelessly wrong with this theory of Suc- 
cessive Ages which drives otherwise competent. 
observers to throw away their common sense and 
cling desperately to a fantastic theory in the very 
teeth of such facts ? 

The science of geology as commonly taught is 
truly in a most astonishing condition, and doubtless 
presents the most peculiar mixture of fact and 
nonsense to be found in the whole range of our 
modern knowledge. In any minute study of a 
particular set of rocks in a definite locality, geology 
always follows facts and common sense; while in 
any general view of the world as a whole, or in 
any correlation of the rocks of one region with 
those of another region, it follows its absurd, un- 
scientific theories. But wherever it agrees with 
facts and common sense, it contradicts these absurd 
theories; and wherever it agrees with these theories, 
it contradicts facts and common sense. That most 
educated people still believe its main thesis of @ 
definite age for each particular kind of fossil is a 
sad but instructive example of the effects of mental 
inertia. 


| 


IV 
The reader will find this matter discussed at 
length in the author’s “ Fundamentals of Geology ” ; 
but here it will be necessary only to draw some 
very obvious conclusions from the jive facts which 
we have set in opposition to the theory of Suc- 
cessive Ages. } 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 119 


1. The first and absolutely incontrovertible con- 
clusion is that this theory of successive ages must 
be a gross blunder, in its baleful effects on every 
branch of modern thought deplorable beyond com- 
putation. But it is now perfectly obvious that the 
geological distinctions as to age between the fossils 
are fantastic and unjustifiable. No one kind of 
true fossil can be proved to be older or younger 
than another intrinsically and necessarily, and the 
methods of reasoning by which this idea has been 
supported in the past are little else than a burlesque 
on modern scientific methods, and are a belated 
survival from the methods of the scholastics of the 
Middle Ages. 

Not by any means that all rock deposits are of 
the same age. The lower ones in any particular 
locality are of course “older ” than the upper ones, 
that is, they were deposited first. But from thes 
it by no means follows that the fossils contained in 
these lower rocks came into being and lived and 
died before the fossils in the upper ones. The latter 
conclusion involves several additional assumptions 
which are wholly unscientific in spirit and incred- 
ible as matters of fact, one of which assumptions” 
is the biological form of the onion-coat theory. But 
since thousands of modern living kinds of plants 
and animals are found in the fossil state, man an- 
cluded, and no one of them can be proved to have 
lived for a period of time alone and before others, 
we must by other methods, more scientific and 
accurate than the slipshod methods hitherto in 


120 ©, JEP D: 


vogue, attempt to decide as best we can how these 
various forms of life were buried, and how the past 
and the present are connected together. But the 
theory of definite successive ages, with the forms 
of life appearing on earth ina precise and invariable 
order, is dead for all coming time for every man 
who has had a chance to examine the evidence and 
has enough training in logic and scientific methods 
to know when a thing is really proved. 

And how utterly absurd for the friends of the 
Bible to spend their time bandying arguments with 
the evolutionist over such minor details as the 
question of just what geological “age” should be as- 
signed for the first appearance of man on the earth, 
when the evolutionist’s major premise is itself di- 
rectly antagonistic to the most fundamental facts 
regarding the first chapters of the Bible, and above 
all, when this major premise is really the weakest 
spot in the whole theory, the one sore spot that 
evolutionists never want to have touched at all. 

I fancy I hear some one object, and ask what we 
are to do with the systematic arrangement of the 
fossils, the so-called ‘“ geological succession,” that 
monument to the painstaking labors of thousands of 
scientists all over the world. This geological series 
is still on our hands; what are we to do with it ? 

It is scarcely necessary for me to say that this 
arrangement of the fossils is not at all affected by 
my criticism of the cause of the geological changes. 
The geological series is merely an old-time taxonomic 
serves, a& classification of the forms of life that used 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 121 


to live on the earth, and is of course just as artificial 
as any similar arrangement of the modern forms of 
life would be. 

We may illustrate the matter by comparing this 
series with a card index. The earlier students of 
geology arranged the outline of the order of the 
fossils by a rather general comparison with the 
series of modern life forms, which happened to 
agree fairly well with the order in which they had 
found the fossils occurring in England and France. 
But only a block out of the middle of the complete 
card index could be made up ‘from the rocks of 
England and France; the rest has had to be made 
up from the rocks found elsewhere. Louis Agassiz 
did herculean work in rearranging and trimming 
this fossil card index so as to make it conform 
better, not only to the companion card index of the 
modern forms of life, but also to that of the embry- 
onic series. From time to time even now readjust- 
ments are made in the details of all three indexes, 
the fossil, the modern, and the embryonic, the 
method of rearrangement being charmingly simple: 
just taking a card out of one place and putting uw 
into another place where we may think it more 
properly belongs. And then if we can convince 
our fellow scientists over the world that our re- 
arrangement is justified, our adjustment will stand, 
—until some one else arises to do a better job. 
When a new set of rocks is found in any part 
of the world it is simplicity itself for any one 
acquainted with the fossil index system to assign 


122 GO... 


these new beds to their proper place, though of 
course the one doing this must be prepared to de- 
fend his assignment with pertinent and sufficient 
taxonomic reasons. 

In view of these facts, we need not be concerned 
as to the fate of the geological classification of the 
fossils. It is a purely artificial system, just as is 
the modern classification ; but both are useful, and 
so far as they represent true relationships they will 
both stand unaffected by any change we may make 
in our opinions as to how the fossils were buried. 
But in view of this purely artificial character of the 
geological series, what a strange sight is presented 
by the usual methods employed to “prove” the 
exact order in which evolution has taken place, 
such for instance as the use made of the graded 
series of fossil “horses,” to illustrate some particu- 
lar theory of just how organic development has 
occurred. One might just as well arrange the 
modern dogs from the little spaniel to the St. Ber- 
nard, for the geological series is just as artificial as 
would be this of the dogs. 

2. Another conclusion from the facts enumer- 
ated above is that there has obviously been a great 
world catastrophe, and that this must be assigned 
as the cause of a large part,—just how large a part 
it is at present difficult to say,—of the changes 
recorded in the fossiliferous rocks. This sounds 
very much like a modern confirmation of the 
ancient record of a universal Deluge; and I say 
confidently that no one who will candidly examine 


GEOLOGY AND ITS LESSONS 123 


the evidence now available on this point can fail to 
be impressed with the force of the argument for a 
world catastrophe as the general conclusion to be 
drawn from the fossiliferous rocks all over the globe. 

3. Finally, there is the further conclusion, the 
only conclusion now possible, if there is no definite 
order in which the fossils occur, namely, that life 
in all its varied forms must have originated on the 
globe by causes not now operative, and this Creation 
of all the types of life may just as reasonably have 
taken place all at once, as in some order prolonged 
over a long period. 

As I have pointed out in my “ Fundamentals,” a 
strict scientific method may destroy the theory of 
Successive Ages, and it may show that there has 
been a great world catastrophe. But here the work 
of strict inductive science ends. It cannot show 
just how or when life or the various kinds of life 
did originate, it can only show how 2t did not. It 
destroys forever the fantastic scheme of a definite 
and precise order in which the various types of life 
occurred on the globe, and thus it leaves the way 
open to say that life must have origimated by just 
such a literal Creation as is recorded in the first 
chapters of the Bible. But this is as far as it can 
be expected to go. It is strong evidence in favor 
of a direct and literal Creation; but it furnishes 
this evidence by indirection, that is, by demolishing 
the only alternative or rival of Creation that can 
command a moment’s attention from a rational 
mind, 


124 Ol ED, 


But of life is not now being created from the not- 
living, of new kinds of life are not now appearing 
by natural process, if above all we cannot prove in 
any way worthy of being called scientific that certain 
types of life lived before others, if in fine man him- 
self 2 found fossil and no one fossil can be proved 
older than another or than that of man himself, why 
es not a literal Creation demonstrated as a scientific 
certainty for every mind capable of appreciating 
the force of logical reasoning ? 


Vil 
CREATION AND THE CREATOR 


I 


E need not here attempt to discuss the 

: : existence or even the nature of God. 

The Infinite One in all His attributes is 
above and beyond discussion. But there are some 
things that we can very profitably gather together 
as the net results of modern scientific investigation 
regarding the origin of things; and to this task we 
must now address ourselves in a very brief way. 

We shall not attempt to deal with the astronom- 
ical aspects of the question, or the origin of our 
world as a planet or the origin of the solar system. 
This would lead us too far afield. We shall make 
more progress in dealing with the questions nearest 
at hand, namely, the origin of the present order of 
things on our globe. 

First we must summarize the facts as we now 
know them in the five departments of knowledge 
with which we have had to deal. 

1. Both matter and energy seem now to be at a 
standstill, so far as creation is concerned ; no means 
being known to science whereby the fixed quantity 
of both with which we have to deal in this world 

125 


126 QO. E. D. 


can be increased (or diminished) in the slightest 
degree. 

2. The origin of life is veiled in a mist that 
science has not dispelled and does not hope to dis- 
pel. By none of the processes that we call natural 
can life now be produced from the not- ‘living. 

8. Unicellular forms can come only from pre- 
existing cells of the same kind; and even the indi- 
vidual cells of a multicellular stesiititie when once 
differentiated, reproduce only other cells after their 
own kind. 

4. Species of plants and animals have wonder- 
ful powers of variation; but these variations seem 
to be regulated and predestined in accordance with 
definite laws, and in no instance known to science has 
this variation resulted in producing what could prop- 
erly be called a distinct new kind of plant or animal. 

5. Geology has been supposed to prove that 
there has been a long succession of distinct types 
of life on the globe in a very definite order ex- 
tending through vast ages of time. This is now 
known to be a mistake. Most living forms of 
plants and animals are also found as fossils; but 
there is no possible way of telling that one ena of 
life lived and occupied the world before others, or 
that one kind of life is intrinsically older than any 
other or than the human race. 


II 


In view of such facts as these, what possible 
chance is there for a scheme of organic evolution ? 


CREATION AND THE CREATOR = 127 


Must we not say that every possible form of the 
development theory is hereby ruled out of court? 
There can be no thought of the gradual develop- 
ment of organic nature by every-day processes In a 
world where such facts prevail. Rather must we 
say, with the force of the accumulated momentum 
of all that has been won by modern science, that, 
instead of the animals and plants on our world 
having arisen. by a long-drawn-out process of change 
and development of one kind into another, there 
must have been just such a literal Creation at the 
beginning as the Bible describes. As we stand 
with uncovered head and bowed form in the pres- 
ence of this great truth, it would seem almost like 
sacrilege to attempt by rhetoric to adorn it. Its 
inevitableness, its majesty, its transcendent impor- 
tance for our generation, would only be obscured 
by so doing. 

The essential idea of the Evolution theory is 
uniformity. It seeks to show that the present 
orders of plant and animal life originated by causes 
or processes identical with those now said to be 
operating in our modern world. It denies that at 
any particular time in the past causes and processes 
were in operation to originate the present order of 
nature which were essentially different from the 
processes now operating in our world under what 
we call natural law. Evolution seeks to smooth 
_out all distinction between Creation and the mod- 
ern régime of “natural law.” 

On the other hand, the essential idea of the 


128 QO. E. D. 


Christian doctrine of Creation is that, back at a- 
period called “the beginning,” forces and powers 
were brought into exercise and results were accom- 
plished which have not since been exercised or 
accomplished. In other words, the origin of the ~ 
world and the things upon it was essentially and 
radically different from the manner in which the 
present order of nature is now being sustained and 
perpetuated. The mere matter of time is in no 
way the essential idea in the problem. The ques- 
tion of how much time was occupied in the work of 
Creation is of no importance, neither is the ques- 
tion of how long ago it took place. The one essen- 
tial idea is that. the processes and methods of 
Creation are beyond us, for we have nothing with 
which to measure it; Creation and the reign of 
“natural law” are essentially incommensurable. 
The one thing that the doctrine of Creation insists 
upon is that the origin of our world and of the 
things upon it must have been brought about by 
some direct and unusual manifestation of the power 
of the Being whom we call the Creator; and that 
since this original Creation the things of nature have 
been perpetuated and sustained by processes and 
methods which (though still essentially inscrutable 
by us) we call the order of nature and the reign of 
natural law. 

But in view of the series of facts enumerated in 
the previous pages, the doctrine of Creation is es- 
tablished by modern scientific discoveries almost 
like the conclusion of a mathematical problem. 


CREATION AND THE CREATOR § 129 


III 

How are modern intelligent men and women to 
avoid any longer this inevitable conclusion of a 
literal Creation as the method of origin for our 
world and the things upon it ? 

The facts enumerated in the previous pages are 
not new; it is only the present grouping and ar- 
rangement of them, and the conclusions drawn 
from them, that are new. Of all the leading facts 
enumerated above, only the last one, the one re- 
garding geology, is any longer a subject of serious 
discussion by educated people. And the general 
facts as stated above regarding geology have been 
proved (by the present writer) with such a wealth 
of facts and arguments that they also must speedily 
be acknowledged by scientists, when the latter 
take the trouble to study these facts and argu- 
ments. And with geology once adjusted to a 
system of real inductive science, instead of being 
as hitherto under the hypnotic control of specula- 
tive fancies and subjective methods, there is no 
longer any room for speculations regarding the 
origin of our world by evolutionary processes. It 
becomes almost a mathematical Q. E. D. that 
things were made in the beginning by methods and 
processes that are no longer operative, so far as 
science can observe. This means a real Creation, 
in the Bible sense of the term, something distinct 
from the means by which nature is now being 
sustained and carried on. Any attempt to describe 
the why or the how of this Creation would be use- 


130 O.7E. “D: 


less speculation; but this much 7% science, and 
science that is to-day all the more impressive and 
conclusive because it has been won by centuries of 
conflict with every conceivable opposing prejudice. 


IV 

In conclusion we may attempt to speak in a brief 
way of the present relationship between the Crea- 
tor and the things which He has made, and if pos- 
sible to dispel the sad confusion prevailing in many 
minds between God’s continued immediate action 
in certain departments of nature and His action in 
other departments through the intermediate use of 
second causes. 

On every hand we hear proclaimed a form of 
the doctrine of God’s omnipresence (usually called 
the divine “immanence ”’) which not only denies all 
distinction between the original Creation and the 
present perpetuation of the world, but a form which. 
practically denies all second causes, and which can- 
not well be distinguished from pantheism, though 
it would be a spiritualistic or “idealistic” form of 
pantheism, or ‘ monism,” to use the favorite modern 
term. These extreme advocates of what they term 
the divine “immanence” go so far as to deny all 
second causes. And while they are fond of pro- 
claiming this idea as an entirely new discovery, 
and proclaiming it with all the enthusiasm of pros- 
elytes to a new religion, they are also prone to 
state the (seemingly) opposed doctrine of second 
causes in such a way that it amounts to a mere 


CREATION AND THE CREATOR 131 


caricature, a burlesque, picturing a sort of “ab- 
sentee”? God, who started the universe running 
and now merely stands by and watches it go. 
Thus pantheism and deism are often spoken of as 
the only alternatives for the choice of the modern 
man; for the real teachings of the Bible and of 
Christian philosophy are as completely ignored as 
if they had never been formulated or taught by 
intelligent people. 

Let us first consider the scientific aspects of the 
doctrine of second causes, and the doctrine of God’s 
immediate acting in various departments (or all 
departments) of nature. 

1. We cannot deny that the will of man isa 
real cause, producing continual changes in the 
world about us. More than this, if there are not 
also second causes outside of the will of free in- 
telligent personalities, the whole universe must be 
a gigantic deception; for it seems to be full of 
second causes. Long chains of what seem like 
second causes exist, made up of infinite numbers 
of links, as when the sun carries an amount of 
water up into the air, the latter dropping the water 
upon a mountain in the form of rain, gravity roll- 
ing it down the slope in vast force, sweeping away 
villages and towns, changing the fates of indi- 
viduals and of nations. To quote two familiar 
examples from Stewart and Tait: “In a steam 
engine the amount of work produced depends upon 
the amount of heat carried from the boiler into the 
condenser; and this amount depends in its turn 


132 Q. E. D. 


upon the amount of coal which is burned in the 
furnace of the engine. In like manner the veloc- 
ity of the bullet which issues from the rifle de- 
pends upon the transformation of the energy of the 
powder; this in turn depends upon the explosion 
of the percussion cap; this again upon the fall of 
the trigger; and lastly this upon the finger of the 
man who fires the rifle.”’ Thus even the very 
strongest opponents of the idea of second causes 
never deny that the latter seem to surround us on 
every side, and that it would be possible to trace a 
continuous line of apparent effects and causes back 
to the very beginning. 

This view of the matter, it is evident, readily 
leads to a deistic view of the universe,—or to that 
burlesque of the Christian view spoken of as the 
doctrine of an “absentee God,” watching His uni- 
verse run from the outside, slightly concerned with 
what it does. 

2. On the other hand, a careful study of the 
correlation of forces shows us that the great First 
Cause is still very closely related to the operation 
of His universe. We may start, for instance, with 
the old argument from the evidences of desegn in 
nature, which, though often sneered at of late, can- 
not be cavalierly dismissed in this way; for, as 
Dugald Stewart has well said, “every combination 
of means to an end implies intelligence.” But the 
direct or immediate action of the great Intelligence 
behind nature is manifest in the marvellous be- 

1“¢The Unseen Universe,’’ p. 184. 


CREATION AND. THE CREATOR = 133 


havior of the cells; which, instead of behaving in 
a way to indicate that their life processes are due 
to properties inherent in the atoms and molecules 
composing them, show every appearance of being 
mere automata under the direct control of an in- 
telligent, purpose-filled Mind,—a Mind external to 
themselves, it is true, and gloriously transcending 
them, but constantly, ceaselessly exercised by an 
immediate action which we may well call ‘“im- 
manent,” in the original and proper sense of this 
term. Yet vital action is capable of exact correla- 
tion with the other forces of nature; and thus the 
modern law of the correlation of forces teaches us 
that the energy behind life must be the same as 
the energy pervading all nature, the various mani- 
festations of which we know as light, heat, gravity, 
electricity, etc. Thus while the study of the be- 
havior of life or the doctrine of “ vitalism” might 
encourage us to think that in the cells and in the 
behavior of protoplasm we are witnessing the di- 
rect action of an intelligent Creator; yet we find 
that by the correlation of forces we must say the 
same about all the physical and chenneal phenom- 
ena of nature. In other words, while the study of 
mere physical and chemical action might easily 
lead us to a strong belief in second causes, or to 
the belief that. in this department of nature at 
least certain “properties” had been imparted to 
matter and it had then been left to act largely by 
itself; yet, since the vital processes of living organ- 
isms are capable of exact correlation with all other 


134 O,))\(E 7D, 


forces, such as light, heat, and electricity, the direct 
action of this universal all-controlling Mind in all 
the phenomena of nature seems demonstrated be- 
yond a doubt, leaving apparently little or no room 
for any action of second causes. 

But this view of the matter, as is very evident, 
is liable to lead to a pantheistic view of the uni- 
verse, than which nothing could be more horrible. 

How then shall we reconcile these conflicting 
views ? 

In this case, as in so many others, the Bible 
comes in to show us the rational via media, the 
straight path of reason and sound philosophy which 
avoids the absurdities of both extremes. 

The plain and unambiguous teaching of the Bible 
is that God, the Creator, is a being, a person, infi- 
nite in all His powers and perfections, omnipresent 
throughout the universe; yet that there is a place 
in which He is to be found, or where He abides, in 
a sense in which He is not to be found in any other 
place. This paradox is easily understood when we 
realize that God is present everywhere throughout 
His universe by His word and by His Spirit,—His 
word being as effective throughout the remotest 
corners of His universe as near at hand, for the 
very simple reason that matter has no “ properties ” 
which He has not imparted to it, and therefore it 
can have no innate inertia or reluctance to act 
which God’s word would need to overcome in order 
to induce it to act, even when this word operates 
across the boundless fields of space. He has created 


CREATION AND THE CREATOR 135 


free personalities, and He leaves the mind of each 
of His creatures free to serve Him or not to serve 
Him, these free intelligent beings becoming thus 
true second causes. More than this, provision for 
almost innumerable second causes seems to have 
been made even among other departments of nature, 
without however interfering with the direct action 
of the word of the Infinite One in guiding and con- 
trolling them all. 

Christ Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, was associated 
with the Father in all the primary work of Crea- 
tion; and He came to earth to show us what God 
the Father is like, that mortals might behold their 
Creator without being consumed. In Him we are 
to behold as much of the Deity as it is for our good 
to know; beyond that we must trust the hand that 
never wearies, the mind that never blunders, the 
heart that never grows cold. 

In reality the seeming conflict between the 
doctrine of second causes and that of God’s 
omnipresence is closely analogous to the old 
(imaginary) conflict between the Law and the 
Gospel, read from the book of nature instead of 
from the Bible. The reign of second causes is the 
reign of law; but God’s immediate action brings 
in the supernatural, the miraculous, or the Gospel. 
Each has its proper place; and neither must be 
dwelt on to the exclusion of the other. We are all 
under the hard exactitude: of the law, with its 
irrevocable condemnation, until the Gospel inter- 
yenes, and not only pardons the past, but enables 


136 Oo Esa Dy 


us to fulfil the law’s requirements for the future. 
The reign of second causes alone would take away 
man’s moral responsibility, making us all mere 
creatures of our environment, the victims of a 
merciless determinism, and death would be the 
inevitable result of the violation of the slightest 
physical or physiological law. But we areall given 
power to live above environment, and a beneficent 
healing power is constantly intervening to save us 
from the consequences of our errors, healing our 
wounds and curing our diseases, in this giving us 
an object lesson of the forgiveness of sin and a 
promise of our ultimate conquest over all its power. 
We are all ineluctably bound about by countless 
chains of second causes, “awful with inevitable 
fates,” until we see through them all the close 
_providential working of our Creator, who is also 
our Saviour, and who is in no way shackled by His 
own laws, but conducts all things according to the 
counsel of His own will. 

The Bible teaches us of a Creation as a definite 
act, completed at a definite period in the past, and 
it gives us the Sabbath as the divine memorial of 
this completed Creation. We have seen how science 
also points backward along the various diverging 
lines of the great perspective of the ages to the 
vanishing point whence they all begin, the birth- 
» day of the world; and we say that thus science 
confirms the Bible record of Creation. But we also 
‘know that when Christ was being examined by the 
Sanhedrin for healing on the Sabbath, He defended 


CREATION AND THE CREATOR 187 


Himself by saying, “My Father worketh hitherto, 
and 1 work.” That is, although “the works 
were finished from the foundation of the world,” 
and second causes are now largely operative in 
nature all around us, still there is everywhere 
manifest an active energy, a presence, an In- 
telligence, “in Whom we live, and move, and have 
our being.” 

That we cannot comprehend all this, that we can- 
not set definite boundaries to these seemingly con- 
flicting views, is not at all surprising ; for we are 
but finite.’ Even His universe partakes so much of 
His prerogative of infinity that it is utterly beyond 
the compass of our finite minds. Indeed, if either 
the ‘Bible or the book of nature contained nothing 
beyond what we could easily comprehend, would it 
not diminish our reverence and awe for the One be- 
hind them, Whom we now regard as infinite in 
power and in wisdom ? 

True, the natural human heart cannot bear this 
thought of the direct acting throughout nature of 
the infinite Creator. It brings us too close beneath 
His gaze in our sinful shortcoming and nakedness. 


1 4 recent clever writer likens some of these metaphysical spec- 
ulations to the act of a baby sucking at a nursing bottle. So long 
as there is any milk in the bottle, the baby sucks with pleasure 
and profit. Unfortunately the little fellow does not always stop 
sucking when the supply of milk gives out, but still keeps on 
sucking empty air, with resulting discomfort and colic. We all 
need to recognize the limits of the intellectual milk supply, and 
not keep on trying to solve problems that are in their very nature 
beyond the limits of the human mind, ‘ 


138 Q. E D. 


And so men draw the veil of their pantheistic or mon- 
istic philosophy over their hearts, to hide them from 
His all-searching gaze. In ancient times they seem 
to have done the same, as the monuments of Egypt 
and Babylonia declare ; and the intimate knowledge 
of Nature and its Creator which they had in the 
morning of our world, degenerated into the nature 
worship and polytheism which we find so nearly 
universal at the first dawn of secular history. Itis 
only the child of God, the redeemed man, who can 
view without flinching the sublime fact of a direct 
Creation, or face the other great fact that what we 
call second causes are not the real causes of natural 
action, that the ordinary phenomena of light, heat, 
gravity, vital action, etc., do not occur because cer- 
tain “ properties ” have been once imparted to mat- 
ter and it then left to act of itself, any more than 
the child of God is left to struggle along with the 
supply of divine grace which was imparted to him 
at his conversion. The Christian feels his constant 
dependence upon his Creator for overcoming power 
day by day, and he sees the whole universe just as 
momently dependent upon the tireless watchcare of 
the great Sustainer of all. The Christian alone de- 
lights to look upon the ceaseless service of his 
Father’s love, perpetually ministering to the needs 
and even to the whims of His creatures. But if this 
tireless ministry reminds man of his own spiritual 
nakedness and insular selfishness, it serves also to 
remind him that it is only the free gift of a right- 
Cousness not his own that can clothe the ashamed 


CREATION AND THE CREATOR 189 


soul cowering beneath the eye of infinite Purity and 
unselfish Love. 

In our natural state we are like the dead, inor- 
ganic matter. Only by a new life that must be im- 
parted to us from above, a real, individual, new 
creation, can we become alive spiritually. And then 
only by constant dependence for spiritual life and 
growth upon the word of the One who first created 
us can we hope to develop into His true sons and 
daughters, whose continuous care is momently ex- 
ercised in controlling every particle of our bodily 
frame, and by whose continuous guidance in the de- 
velopment of character we hope to become worthy 
of a place in His presence forevermore. 


Vv 


Our Lord Jesus once said to the leaders of the 
Jews, “If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; 
for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writ- 
ings, how shall ye believe my words?” (John 5: 
46-47). In our days it is certainly consistent and 
appropriate that those who have had their faith re- 
vived in the first chapters of the Bible should also 
have renewed confidence in the last part of the 
Bible. A belief in a real Creation of the world, as 
recorded in the book of Genesis, naturally implies a 
belief in the end of the world, as predicted in the 
book of Revelation. A belief in the former destruc- 
tion of the world by water is in accord with a be- 
lief in its coming destruction by fire, each of these 
destructions being not absolute but regenerative, 


140 Q. E. D. 


This is in fact the line of argument used in that 
remarkable prophecy of 2 Peter 3:3-7: 

“In the last days mockers shall come with mock- 
ery, walking after their own lusts, and saying, 
Where is the promise of his coming? For, from 
the days that the fathers fell asleep, all things con- 
tinue as they were from the beginning of the crea- 
tion. For this they wilfully forget, that there were 
heavens of old, and an earth compacted out of water 
and amidst water, by the word of God; by which 
means the world that then was, being overflowed 
with water, perished ; but the heavens that are now, 
and the earth, by the same word have been stored 
up for fire, being reserved against the day of judg- 
ment and destruction of ungodly men.” 

Two points in this remarkable prophecy deserve 
special attention: 

1. It is a description of the religio-scientific 
problems of the “last days”; and the class of 
people referred to are represented as “ mocking ” 
at the second coming of Christ, because they have 
grown accustomed to denying, or “ wilfully forget- 
ting,” the former destruction of the world by the 
waters of the Flood. This prediction, as we have 
seen, is in complete and accurate accord with the 
present situation ; for the doctrine of Evolution is 
chiefly supported by the accepted theories of geol- 
“ogy that there never was a universal Flood. Be- 
lief in the current theories of geology and in a 
universal Deluge cannot be held by the same mind, 
for they are mutually exclusive: either one makes 


CREATION AND THE CREATOR 141 


the other meaningless. And as the popular geology 
is the foundation of the Evolution theory, so does 
the latter render useless and incredible what the 
Bible calls “ that blessed hope,” the second coming 
of Christ and the purification of the earth by fire. 
2. The mockers here described certainly talk ex- 
actly like our modern uniformitarcvans ; for they 
argue that “from the days that the fathers fell 
asleep, all things continue as they were from the 
beginning of the creation.” They imply that in 
the days of “the fathers” some people were foolish 
enough to believe differently ; but since they “fell 
asleep” we have learned better. It should also be 
carefully noted that their theory of uniformity 
stretches back, not to the close of Creation, but to 
“the beginning of the Creation.” Plainly, then, 
Creation ttself ts embraced in their scheme of abso- 
lute uniformity ; and according to their view all 
distinction is smoothed out between Creation and 
the present perpetuation of the world by second 
causes. How could we ask for a more accurate 
word picture of the modern popular doctrines of 
the evolutionists and their characteristic methods 
of reasoning than is here given us by an inspired 
prophecy nearly two thousand years ago? 


VI 
The call of the hour to the Church of Christ is 
for a renewed confidence in that Guide Book which 
she has brought with her down the centuries. As 
her Divine Lord went away, He commissioned her 


142 O. SED, 


to carry His good tidings to all peoples; and go 
long as she remained true to this commission and 
to her instruction book, the world’s cunning sophis- 
tries could not deceive her, nor could the cruel 
power of a tworld empire stifle. her voice. And 
now when her absent Lord is about to return again, 
it surely behooves her to set her house in order, 
and to return with candor and fidelity to that writ- 
ten code of instruction left with her by her depart- 
ing Master. 

Vor the old-time friends of the Bible, the night 
of darkness and doubt is rapidly passing ; the morn- 
ing of a fuller knowledge and a fuller confidence is 
at hand. Gone are those agonies of doubt regard- 
ing the truthfulness of the Bible’s history and the 
adequacy of its ethics for the needs of our modern 
world. Abandoned forever are all those futile 
attempts at compromise, in a vain and painful 
endeavor to translate the record of Creation into 
the language of a pseudo-science now rapidly being P 
outgrown, and to adapt the plan of salvation to the 
false standards of an artificial age that seems to 
be rapidly disintegrating before the Church’s very 
eyes. She now realizes that her Bible is more 
accurate than the world’s science, her simple gos- 
pel wiser than its philosophy. 

The hour has struck; a sublime opportunity is 
before her; for the God of nature has Himself 
opened up before His Church the long-sealed chap- 
ters in His larger book, and is now pointing out 
the marvellous agreement between His book of 


CREATION AND THE CREATOR 143 


nature and His written record. The strongest mes- 
sage of the Church has often been heard amid the 
darkest ages of apostasy. And the prophecies of 
the Bible have repeatedly pointed out a special 
message that the Church is to bear to the world in 
that darkest hour just before the breaking of eter- 
nal day,—a message that we now see is wonder- 
fully adapted to this age of evolutionism in science 
and pantheism in philosophy. Looking down along 
the darkening vistas of the coming years, the great 
Jehovah saw how a vastly increased knowledge of 
His created works would be perverted into a bur- 
lesque of Creation, and how this would result in a 
wide-spread apostasy in which His written Word 
would be derided and scorned. Thus He timed a 
special reform for His faithful people to give to the 
world just before the end, calling upon the disbe- 
lievers in Oreation then living to “worship him 
that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the 
fountains of waters” (Rev. 14:7). And so now, 
when the darkness of evolutionism and pantheism 
is most dense, a light from above has illuminated 
the record in the book of nature, the language of 
which is already more familiar to our modern 
world than the language of the book so long dis- 
trusted and almost derided. This message itself 
from the book of nature is full of the essential ideas 
of the Gospel, faith in a Creator, who by His tire- 
less care for. the particles composing our bodies 
keeps them in order, and by healing our injuries 
and curing our diseases inspires us with faith in 


144 QUE. D, 


Him as our Saviour and Redeemer. And in such 
an hour, in such a world crisis, He has placed 
within the power of His Church these modern 
means of travel and quick communication, in order 
to speed on this last work of His Church so as to 
complete it in “this generation.” 


Printed in the United States of America 


WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


The Fundamentals of Geology 


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CHALtS PAN IMApS)y gehyai i). mies eh PAI SS 


“T have been intensely interested, . . . and I 
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: Leland Stanford University. 


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geological side.’”—-GEORGE HOWARD PARKER, 

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The University of Chicago. 


“Tt was needed. I think you have peeled the onion- 
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fessor Price’s argument.””— A. H. SAYcsk, 
Oxford University, England. 


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criticism.”—SiIR ROBERT ANDERSON, 


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adaptedness to the need of the hour.”’ 

—WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON, 
The University of Chicago. 





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